This month's Trains has an item about an interlocking replacement in Chicago. The old interlocking had manually operated semaphores. Was it a true interlocking, or just manually operated semaphores?

What is the current remaining list of manual interlockings? Any?

Galveston and Beaumont Texas have towers still working. One controls a drawbridge and another is also on a bridge.

Brighton Park was a set of manually-operated semaphores, and maybe at best one or two switches. As the NS guy explained to me when I was there years ago, all the semaphores did was act as a giant traffic cop waving the trains through.

Rod operation is becoming extinct. We're on "death watch" for HO Tower at Hancock, Md./WV, which is supposed to "fall" by the end of this month, and supposedly the rods have already been cut. Brunswick, Md. has (had?) a tower and a couple switches near the passenger station.

Sandy;

WB tower is still very much active on all three shifts, was remodeled several years ago by MARC, and is expected to be in service as long as MARC wants it. WB, BTW, stands for "Westbound", not West Brunswick, as many think it does. I'm not sure how much the tower actually controls. I know that any crew departing Brunswick is supposed to call them when ready, but I think most of the time the operator just calls the AU dispatcher in Jacksonville to actually get the signal and switches out of the yard.