(The following story by Diane Krieger Spivak appeared on the Gary Post-Tribune website on April 7.)
EAST CHICAGO — How do you move a 100-year-old, 30-ton railroad switching tower 65 miles?
Very carefully.
Joking aside, it’s a question the Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum has to find an answer for soon.
Museum members found out the Grasselli Tower, owned by Indiana Harbor Belt Railroad Company and used over the last century to switch tracks for converging EJ&E, B&OCT and IHB Railroads, was retired from service in November.
In two months, the group has raised $31,000 toward the $50,000 it will need to move the vintage two-story wood frame structure, one of the last working mechanical interlocking towers in the Chicago area, from its spot near Kennedy Avenue and 151st Street to their museum in North Judson.
Grasselli’s sister tower, the Calumet tower, a mile north, is still operational.
It’s what’s inside the Grasselli that weighs so much, which is why museum members Fred Boyer, of Knox, and Les Beckman, of Crown Point, are sure the building was constructed around the 68 switching levers, made of iron, inside.
In the old days, a switchman would keep an eye on a wooden light-up map of the tracks situated on a wall over the levers, Beckman said.
As a train approached, small lights would glow at various locations, letting the switchman know where to switch tracks if another train was also coming.
He would unlock the heavy iron switches, move them forward to switch the tracks, then move them back again when the railroad cars had passed.
“A lot of the old timers know this in and out,” said David Sandlin, a signal maintainer for IHB for the last 10 years.
The 12-feet by 35-feet 2-story tower and massive switching machinery run nearly the length of the building, on both floors. The machinery now has been replaced by a computer-operated 8- by 10-by 8-feet stainless steel control box, run remotely by IHB in Illinois.
“We’ll have to disassemble the levers to move them to North Judson,” said Beckman, who acquired a multipage list of instructions from another railroad museum to do just that.
Unfortunately, moving the parts by rail is not an option, Beckman said.
The work will likely be done by truck.
The group is getting proposals for moving the building, which will requiring separating the first floor from the second.
Phil Buckingham, engineer of communications and signals for IHB, said the museum has until June 1 to move the tower.
“We’re being flexible, though, as long as they’re making progress,” he said.
The Grasselli is the third tower Buckingham has retired. A century ago 12 to 15 such towers existed in Northwest Indiana and Northeast Illinois, Buckingham said.
“We started retiring them in the 1970s,” Buckingham said. Only the Calumet tower and one other in Dolton, Ill. remain.
IHB plans to remove the Calumet tower within the next two or three years and the Dolton tower will be removed by the city of Chicago under its CREATE terminal rehabilitation program, Buckingham said.