Our restored Southern Railway/Carolina & North-Western depot in Newton, NC has just acquired a pair of semaphores (cast body, lenses, flag) that came down from another nearby Southern station.

Inside our depot, we still have the mechanical hand levers that control each unit for its up, intermediate, and down positions. These are operable, but as best I can tell, they merely push pipes outside the building to varying degrees or another. Our hand levers only have casting numbers on them and there are no identifying marks such as US&S, Adklake, F-M, etc.

I would like to restore these train order boards to working condition with our hand levers, but I have no idea how to do this (Hey, I'm an electronics dude). The website www.semaphores.com looked promising, but hasn't been updated for the last 10 years as best I can tell.

In an ideal world, someone out there in preservaton land would have a spare pole and interconnecting hardware (are you out there?) but in the meantime, I would be pleased with some mechanical drawings or even educated sketches of what we need to restore and fabricate parts needed for these manual signals.

Thanks

Matt Bumgarner

Matt, It sounds like your at least off to a good start having the parts you mentioned.Do you have the bearing mount part that goes on top of the pole wich holds both cast spectacle pcs? If so finding a pole/with ladder and making up the pipe connectors should be easy.

I was faced with a bigger dilema finding everything to make up a train order semaphore for the depot i'm restoring out in my backyard.My depot originally had one of those Cowdrey revolving disc train order signals when it was built in 1890.Try finding one of those anywhere! By or before the 1920's it was replaced with a dual direction US&S Co. type semaphore on a 27ft. pole with control rodding directed to the bay window.By the 1970's this was removed and the pole was torched off near the base.That's all i had to work with when i got my depot.The RR had removed the top center bay window sash/blanked it in and had nailed up a backer board inside wich cables connected to the pipe rods wich then ran thru the depot to the control handles.All this was gone except the holes in the blanked off window sash.

Just trying to find any kind of semaphore stuff out there now is almost impossible and expensive.I ended up just making one myself out of misc. parts pcs.ect.About 15 years ago i bought a Federal top pole bearing mount with spectacles at a train show for $200 wich i had laying around, i later bought some semaphore blades,lens,and a Adlake electric light box for the top.I ended up streching out a old NKP signal pole i had to 27ft.i then straightened up a couple old bent signal pole ladders i had and mounted them to the pole wich i had laying in my backyard for 3 months trying to figure everything out.On the ladder brackets i made up and welded holders for the pipe connecting rods to run down near the base.Trying to get the correct bend in them where they mounted to the spectacles was a bit of a challenge.

I did not like the way how the RR had blanked off the upper center bay window sash to run stuff to the inside.So i just ended up making up handles with a mounting bracket about 3 ft. from the base to control the blades manually outside.Is it really correct for my depot? No, because i don't have the correct US&S semaphore to begin with.All in all it still looks good,i did the best i could with what i had to work with and could afford and have a train order semaphore on a 27ft. pole the same height as the original,i'm happy with it and i havn't had a visitor scoff or complain about it yet.

Finding a RR signal pole shouldn't be a problem,next look at a lot of old depot pictures that show the train order semaphores up close,or take pictures of some others around close by that you know of or have friends do so on trips.I had a friend take some pictures of a train order semaphore pole with the pipe control rods and levers and it was a great help when i was working on mine.I also have a old 1916 GRS signal book filled with all sorts of semaphore signal stuff but most are the type with the electrical box base where the rod goes down the inside of the pole to the motor.When i had my train order semaphore signal finished and my concrete base poured and cured i had a local tree service guy come over with his truck and for $100 he lifted mine up in place for me while i bolted it down.

Matt, on another subject what kind of narrow gauge trucks are you trying to find for your boxcars? Send me a message.

Fritz

I'm not sure if we have drawings, but there is a similar semaphore on Barber Junction Depot here at the NC Transportation Museum. A tape measure for scale and a some photos and you should be off to a good start.

John Bechtel
Master Mechanic

Matt, Attached is a photo of the train order semaphore i made up for my depot using parts.I don't know if any of this would help for the application you want to do or not? For the pipe connecting control rods i used 1" pipe.Since my signal pole was 27ft. tall not including the bearing top mount with specatacles and light box i went to Lowes bought 6 - 10ft. pcs.of 1" pipe with coupling pcs. to connect them together for the total desired length wich i needed.Where the pipe rods mount to the actual cast spectacle bolt stud,on the ends of the pipe i welded some end pcs. of old RR brake rigging rods with eyelets from the local scrapyard.As i mentioned i had to make the proper bend near the end of each pipe where they mounted to the spectacle to make them operate right.

My ladder has 4 support connecting brackets to the main signal pole.On the backside end of each bracket i welded a 3" long pc. of flatstock bar with a 3" pc. of 1 -1/2 inch pipe welded to the end of that as a sleeve for the 1" pipe control rods to slide down thru.So on each side of the ladder there are 4, a total of 8 all together as holders/sleeves for the pipe rods to slide thru.Since i don't have my control arms inside the depot and instead outside on the actual pole. About 4ft. from the signal pole base i attached pipe elbows to the 1" pipe control rods and made handles that screwed into each.About at that location are also my bottom 1 1/2" support sleeves on the bottom ladder bracket,i drilled holes thru them,then where each of the 3 positions were on the semaphore pipe control rods i drilled holes thru the 1" control rod pipe.I then attached a small chain to each side of the bottom brackets and attached a pin.So whenever i want to change positions on each semaphore blade all i do is lift up on the pipe control rod handle and insert the pin into the hole for whatever position i want.

I did not extend my ladder all the way to the ground for the sake and reason of keeping my 4 year old grandson from climbing up the 27ft. pole! I have a shorter 10ft. tall RR signal by my garage with a ladder to the ground and i have already caught him trying to climb to the top of that one! I'm planning on making up another depot train order semaphore this next year for our local rail trail for our Monroeville,Ohio LS&MS/NYC depot wich were restoring back to it's 1919 NYC RR evaluation photo appearance wich will be our trail headquaters,meeting room and rail trail interperative museum.

The one i've made up for my depot and the one i'm planning on doing may not be factory original RR material but they do have some real parts and give the look of what was once was used by depots years ago.

Fritz- Thanks for your photos and advice. Very nice depot as well. You can view the trucks we are trying to reproduce for our Chester & Lenoir car at :

http://www.tarheelpress.com/LawndaleBoxcar/Trucks.html

The ET&WNC can use more modern EBT or D&RGS style archbars...


John- Thanks for pointing out the semaphores on the Barber station. I completely forgot they were there. I'll come over in the next month or so with tape & camera in hand. I'll give you a heads-up before I come. Also, if you see Gil Williams soon, tell him we have the patterns he sent for ET&WNC Combine #15 and should have him samples cut before Thanksgiving.

Thanks!

Matt Bumgarner