N&W CPLs, the last generation (NW Mailing List)

[NW Mailing List]

Jim,
CPLs were last installed where it was more cost effective not to rewire and thus retest everything.  Not sure if US&S was still selling them or not, but Safetran had them for sale and was our preferred signal vendor.

John Marbury
NS signals, retired

> 
> A few years ago I was in Keystone, WV and noticed NS had installed a CPL.
> I thought this odd because vaderisation had been in progress for many years
> at that point.  Upon closer inspection, I noticed some differences in this
> signal from others I had looked at.  The target was sectioned and had many
> fasteners in patterns showing from the front side.  Yesterday, walking the
> peavine, I found a couple more such CPLs.  On closer inspection (see
> photos) I saw that the mounting hardware for both the target and the lamps
> was quite different from the US&S spider arrangement.
> After getting home and studying the images, it seems that the newer
> hardware is marked Safetran.
> Most people might consider this to be in the realm of minutia, but if there
> are any other signal fanatics out there (and I'm at least talking to Abe),
> I would be interested as to whether N&W had to go to Safetran because US&S
> could/would no longer supply parts to the old design, as well as when the
> change would have occurred.  It would seem it would have been prior to 2014
> when the NS ceased operations on the peavine.  Wikipedia says US&S went to
> Ansaldo STS in 2009 and then to Hitachi STS this year, but so far I haven't
> found anything on when they would have stopped producing CPL
> signals/parts.  I realize it may be a long shot, but was hoping someone
> else might be interested and/or have some more information on one of my
> favorite aspects (pun intended) of the N&W.
> Jim Cochran
> 
>