08-11-02 PHOTOS: Bailey's Wye

Bailey's Wye is the nexus of current railroad operations located just south of the Camden station next to the raven's football stadium the wye represents the junction between the Main Line south to Washington, DC, the Belt Line that goes around the top of the city to Philly the connection to Locust Point yards and finally the connection to the stubby remnants of Camden Station.

The wye is anchored by three intelockings. On the east leg is LEADENHALL-ST, on the west leg is BAILEY and on the north leg is HB TOWER. All interlockings fully utilize classic B&O CPL type signals and it is these signals I took a few minutes one Saturday morning to document.

This set of photos is sort of a remake for me as I visited this location back in 2004, but that was with my old camera and I wanted to check on some recent developments. BTW I just realized that I failed to properly color correct the photos so they'll all have a red tint due to the morning sun.

The full set can be see here.

Here is BAILEY interlocking as seen from the mast signal coming off the Locust point branch. The 4-track grade crossing is on Warner Street and there is another crossing w/in interlocking limits at Ridgley Street. Both crossings means that people at the Ravens stadium can be alerted when something interesting is going on :-P

 While at the far end of the interlocking there is a three-track B&O signal gantry I didn't bother to walk down that way so instead of got a close up of the CPL dwarfs on the MARC tracks that each have a half set of orbitals. At BAILEY interlocking the MARC tracks to Candem Yard do not interact with the CSX mainline tracks.

Moving to the North point of the wye we see the back to back signals for BAILEY (foreground) and HB tower. the MARC tracks are on the far right and in the front is the connector track to Locust Point. There is a MARC yard and shop complex there and deadhead train sets will use this track to access the 3-track Camden terminal.

This "classic" CPL signal is actually brand new. The former signal on this location was demolished in a derailment in 2008, but fortunately the C&S department had some spares and had this replacement up in no time. The signal is lined for a southbound CSX movement.

Here is a different view showing the proximity of the Raven's stadium.

Here is the signal for HB tower. Both this and the original BAILEY mast were installed in the early 90's when the Camden Station was rebuilt for the new Orioles Stadium at Camden Yards.

The remains of the CPL mast crushed in the derailment was still on site and was as yet untouched by scavengers.

The last apex of the wye, LEADENHALL ST is much less impressive than the other two interlockings, consisting of just a couple of CPL dwarfs and a pair of turnouts, but I did notice some recent modifications.

Previously the two CPL dwarfs coming off the wye could display APPROACH and MEDIUM APPROACH, which indicated there was a track circuited block beyond the interlocking leading to some fixed end of block sign or Restricting signal at the entrance to the yard.

However as you can see this time the dwarfs have been modified to just display Stop and Restricting which indicated that un-signaled track begins at this point.

As I was leaving the train the signal at BAILEY was cleared for passed through headed by CSX C40-10W #5203.

For some reason it came to a stop which allowed a hobo with a backpack to drop off one of the intermodal cars. This was the best picture I was able to get.

The train also got me to take another picture of the HB Tower mast, only this time more in focus with the signal lamps.

Well that's it. No videos this time.