TRACKING THE BALTIMORE & OHIO CSX Philly Sub BY MICHAEL T. BURKHART/PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR
TUNNELS. COLOR POSITION LIGHT signals. Fast intermodal freights. While these words often go hand-in-hand to de- scribe hallowed locations on the old Baltimore & Ohio like Sand Patch and the Magnolia Cutoff, they also describe the Philadelphia Subdivision. CSX’s largely single-track Philly Sub
runs 89 miles between Philadelphia and Baltimore. This stretch of track in Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland parallels the urban Northeast Corridor and Interstate 95, but there are stretches where the railroad runs through the countryside. It’s also home to a large concentration of classic Balti- more & Ohio CPL signals. The unique color position light (CPL)
signal was developed by the B&O in the 1920s. The railroad’s superinten-
dent of signaling, Frank Patenal, devel- oped the system to improve upon the position light signals earlier developed
by the Pennsylvania Railroad. First in- stalled on the B&O subsidiary Staten Island Railroad, they were soon de- ployed system wide after their initial success. Since 2008, successor CSX has been slowly replacing all of the remain- ing CPL’s on its system with more con- temporary hooded vertical targets. There are still a number of CPL’s locat- ed along the Philly Sub, and most are not slated for immediate replacement, but time is no doubt getting short. Let’s take a brief look at the eastern three-quarters of the line, from Philadelphia to Aberdeen, Md. The original Philly Sub route dates back to 1886, running roughly parallel to the Pennsylvania Railroad main line (now the Northeast Corridor shared by Am- trak and SEPTA) varying only a few
OPPOSITE: Westbound CSX train Q373 is only a few miles out of Greenwich Yard in South Philadelphia and is about to enter Boone Tunnel be- tween Darby and Sharon Hill, Pa. This commanding view of the Philadelphia skyline is from the Pine Street overpass on March 3, 2012. ABOVE: Light engine move Y103 enters the 1921 Art Museum Tunnel in Philadelphia on Feb. 26, 2012. This view, accessed from the Schuylkill River Trail, was shrouded in shadows until brush was cut back from the portal in fall 2011.
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