A friend of mine who is a retired Conrail yardmaster and railroad author emailed this to me. It would certainly be a VERY interesting junction to model. :teeth: http://www.trainweb.org/dunn/2006d24a/ It's about 3/4 of the way down the page. Here's the text of the email as well: "I cannot say that I have ever even heard of, let alone seen one of these 'contra-diamond' operations. The multiple photos in the article link you forwarded make it believable, but the concept is still pretty...well...'unbelievable'. A very clever solution on behalf of the Sacramento Southern, using the Pandrol tie plates and removable clips, etc. Frankly, I am a bit surprised, since this does seem to work, that there aren't a few more of these. I am with the author, though, with regard to his sense of the relative cost vs. maintaining actual diamonds: "But it still took about four UP employees several hours to accomplish all this. It is hard to believe that doing this every week is less costly than maintaining diamonds across the UP tracks, especially since the diamonds are located at the approach to the bridge over the Sacramento River, where train speed is slow." I wonder if there is a 'Standard Plan' for this arrangement, now, among the UP's engineering drawings. If you were to model this, some visitors to your layout would no doubt insist that no prototype exists. Also, I know of a short line that was notified one day by one of the big Class I carriers that their historic diamond crossing was soon going to be straight-railed, and to make arrangements not to have any rolling stock or other rail equipment 'stranded' on the 'wrong side' of the to-be-deleted crossing. The 'stubbed' segment of the short line was apparently used too infrequently to justify the expense by the Class I to maintain two diamonds. The diamonds would, however, be left in the weeds next to the site of the crossing, 'just in case'. Well, the short line responded that the plan was O.K. by them, but they questioned the wisdom of a Class I that would want to sever a busy, double-track main line...after all, the short line's predecessors had built through there many years before the Class I's predecessors, so the straight-railing would need to be in favor of the short line. But, if the Class I insisted, then it was alright with the smaller carrier for the diamonds to wind up stored in the weeds nearby. The Class I's legal department went back and examined the timeline of events regarding who built what and when at that location, whereupon they realized that it was they who were technically crossing the little guy (whose diamonds were once on the route of a very BIG guy). All discussion of straight-railing the crossing promptly ceased."
Thanks for the link, I remember thhat they had to put the temporary diamond in place for railfair 99 when I went to that. Kevin
Very interesting solution. And trip report itself was fun to read about. Thanks for passing it on. Regards Ed
Well that's certainly thought provoking. We have a CSX / NS crossing and interchange connection here in Wilson, NC, where CSX is in control. I've never really considered why CSX has control. I just assumed it was because they were the busy railroad, and for NS it was just a branch. Admittedly, I'm not sure whose predecessor was there first. That may explain it. Most likely, (I'm guessing here), it was a legal arrangement between the two railraods in more recent times. Control may have even changed hand over the years. Do any of you guys know about this?
