Norfolk Southern is not having a good day today
in their Fostoria Division.
As can be seen in both photos, signal maintainers have been working hard, and since this morning, to try to get the South Main Street grade crossing signal to work in Fostoria. This trip, located near the more western of the two diamonds NS has with CSX, is responsible for stopping Main Street traffic when a NS train approaches from the west. A trip that is actuated about 15 to 25 times per day for Norfolk Southern consists passing east this way between Fort Wayne (or Lima) and Bellevue, Ohio. (Note: The NS "Nickel Plate Road" route is shown running horizontally across the above photo and crosses S Main Street just off the right side of the photo.)
Troubleshooting efforts involved manually tripping the gates from the relay house on the right, and began today's headaches. Since that time, the western track 1 trip has been isolated as the cause of the problem. At the time of this writing, 3:30 PM EST, no or very few NS trains have passed this diamond for 6 hours. NS is re-routing, sometimes merely onto track 2, but the number of westbound trains delayed is large enough that the NS Fostoria Dispatcher will not say it on the squawk when he is asked by several delayed engineers with their consists. With the lesser amount of the mainline trackage in Fostoria, it is unusual for NS to dominate the air waves, but its happening today.
According to radio conversations, NS engineers are also lacking proper signaling because of the problem, also causing the dispatcher to constrain passage across the diamond..
The CSX side appears to be less affected, as one of its big mixed freights is seen pulling away west. No doubt the CSX traffic has interrupted the NS repair efforts on the diamond.
Aren't you glad Trainz has the very reliable ATLS?
