--(Tribune-Star/Jim Avelis)
| --(Tribune-Star/Jim Avelis) |
| Historical fascination: A northbound CSX freight train crosses Conrail tracks near Haley tower, just north of Eighth Avenue on Tuesday morning. The tower is due to be put out of commission soon. |
by Jason Hathaway
As teen-age buddies, Bill Foster and Scott Withrow often explored new and unseen territory by following trains on their bicycles. Usually, their journeys would end at Haley Tower near 13 th Street and Eighth Avenue.
The manned interlocking railroad tower was a place of historical fascination to the two young men.
"If you're in the Terre Haute area and you're watching or following trains, you eventually end up [at Haley Tower]," says Withrow, now 34. "This is the busiest spot for trains in town."
Foster, 36, remembers one of the first times he came in contact with Haley Tower and former operator Clee Sprague. "I used to pedal my bike down to the tracks by Haley Tower, and then I heard this voice saying, 'Hey! What are you doing? Come over here!,' " Foster says. The voice belonged to Sprague, who took a liking to the young man, answered his questions about the railroad and took him on a tour of the old brick tower. Sprague, of Clinton, spent many years there pulling levers to switch trains onto different tracks until he retired from CSX Transportation Inc. in 1989.
Over the years, Foster and Withrow have held on to their enjoyment of train watching, a hobby they say is somewhat popular throughout the Wabash Valley, but different from the hobby of locomotive tabulation, profiled in the award-winning 1996 movie "Trainspotting."
"There are a lot of railroad buffs in the Terre Haute area, more than you'd realize," Withrow says. "You just follow the trains and you get to see new territory and get to take pictures of places you've never seen before."
Last year, CSX resumed talks about retiring the 75-year-old Haley Tower from service in late 1999 and moving the substation's interlocking operations to Indianapolis or to corporate headquarters in Jacksonville, Fla., Withrow says.
"It's getting to be one of a kind," he says. "It's the last operating tower in the state of Indiana. All across the United States, manned interlocking towers are being torn down. Also, Haley Tower is one of the last standing railroad relics in Terre Haute."
Upon hearing that CSX was likely to raze Haley Tower by late 1999, like other old railroad towers in the area, Foster and Withrow grabbed some friends and began working to save it.
At an auction in January, they purchased a vacant lot adjacent to Haley Tower and became incorporated as the non-profit Haley Tower Historical & Technical Society. The group elected Foster president and Withrow secretary and treasurer.
"We're just getting rolling with this, really," Withrow says. "The five of us who have incorporated have pretty much used our own financial resources to purchase the land and get everything rolling."
The group contacted CSX and expressed interest in buying Haley Tower to prevent its demolition.
"We're planning to move the tower, and we're trying to decide what will be done with it," CSX director of corporate communications Gary Wollenhaupt says. "We've been in discussions with the Haley Tower group to see how we can best accommodate what they want to do with the tower."
The closing of manned interlocking towers across the country is part of a trend of modernization of railroad operations and switching to a more automated, centralized control, Wollenhaupt says. "It makes manned interlocking towers no longer necessary," he says.
CSX has offered the Haley Tower organization first refusal rights on the building after its closing. After the organization buys the tower, it plans to move it a short distance and restore it at a cost of approximately $35,000, Foster says.
"To be honest, I was a little nervous about moving it at first but the contractors say it will be OK," he says. "There are probably buildings in worse shape than this that have been moved."
Once Haley Tower is moved, the Historical & Technical Society has big plans for it "We want to open some kind of museum for railroad history," Withrow says. "Our first priority, though, is to get the tower spruced up. Eventually, people will be able to come in and see it."
Other plans include finding additional railroad history relics for the museum and eventually building a shelter near the train tracks so train enthusiasts can come watch the trains go by.
"You'll find that a lot of the local railroad fans come [to Haley Tower] to watch trains," Foster says. "It's so nice to come here and find a warm body switching the tracks than a big metal box of computers."
The Historical & Technical Society has already reached an agreement with Canadian Pacific Railway to obtain the interior and control levers of the Spring Hill Tower south of Terre Haute, which closed in January. The society considered purchasing the Spring Hill Tower as an addition to its planned Wabash Valley Railroader Museum grounds, but decided the moving expense would be too costly, Foster says.
The society looking for new members and contributors for the railroader museum project. "It doesn't have to be anybody with a specific interest in railroads," Foster says. "Anybody interested in any kind of historical preservation could understand and appreciate what we're doing here."
This is a misquote. There are still manned interlockings in the greater Chicago area, as well as one in Michigan City, Indiana.
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