Cortland Junction

 

                                              Cortland Junction

This is  a photo  by Dan Myers of Franklin, N.Y.  This was Huntington Street in Cortland looking east around 1978. Much of the old Cortland Jct. still existed.  The (LV/Midland) tracks east of the DL&W were gone and the diamond removed and placed in the ditch.The signaling system must however, have had some kind of a "who owns it" situation as the entire signal system was still there and the signals lit--even with the tracks gone.

This particular shot shows a line swinging off the LV branch and north toward Port Watson St. as everything in town was being run by Conrail at the time. The line continued toward the diamond with a switch that turned south so that the old LV branch could be accessed from either direction--sort of a wye situation.  This particular configuration of fixed signals was used by the LV as the distant signal both east and west of the diamond. They were placed about 200 yards from the diamond. 

At the diamond itself, the LV had to stop and manually activate the signals with a key each way.  A relay gave them 8 minutes to cross over the old DL&W before everything re-set favoring the DL&W line.  Close in to the diamond, were 4 semaphore setups with one fixed blade and one motorized blade.  One set faced east, west, north and south.  The DL&W had priority over the crossing. Their distant signals were color light and about a half mile away. 

Myers said "the diamond had been pulled out and LV (former NY&OM) tracks were gone but all of the signals were still there and lit up.  Tracks or not!!!  The relay case was the biggest one I had ever seen.  The kids had gotten into it and busted all of those expensive glass relays to pieces.   The signal maintainer at Cortland told me that I could take anything I wanted as it was all going to the junk anyway."