Sand Patch Tower Closes
Sand Patch Tower - Photo October 8, 1973, by Jim Bradley
From its lofty perch atop the "Summit of the Alleghenies," Sand Patch ("SA") Tower in Pennsylvania soldiered on in testimony to fine railroading tradition through nearly nine decades. On November 7, 2001, it closed.
The tower, replacing an earlier wooden structure, was opened by the B&O in 1914 following the completion of the double-track tunnel - currently in use - built as a modernization project to accommodate increased traffic across the mountain.
The brick building has been a landmark along the route of the Capitol Limited. A hallmark artifact of the building, visible only in its interior, was a spiral metal staircase, a space-saving feature due to the tower's tight position against a bank between the current right-of-way and the track's original alignment.
According to the book "Sand Patch - Clash of Titans," by Charles S. Roberts (1993, Barnard Roberts & Co., Baltimore), the tower housed an 80-lever GRS electric plant. Semaphores were in use until the 1940's. In 1953, a remote control machine was added to the office to assume the functions of retired Manila Tower, east of Sand Patch Tunnel.
Sand Patch had the distinction of being along the country's last operating Morse circuit for the exchange of train information. Until 1984, the Morse wire still extended some 64 miles from Viaduct Junction in Cumberland, Maryland, to Confluence, Pennsylvania. These two towers and their intermediate offices, including Sand Patch, were often staffed by operators who had been around when Morse was still a requirement decades earlier. Those knowing Morse would generally use it as their preferred option to talking on the phone. A flood that year took out the Morse wire east of Sand Patch and it was not replaced. But it remained available on the west side from Sand Patch to Confluence, and it was in use until the day Confluence Tower was demolished by a derailing freight train in May 1987. Morse circuits have been resurrected in museums for demonstration purposes, but its use in bona fide railroad operations in this country ended at Sand Patch Tower.
The tower's closing was part of an ongoing project by CSXT to replace interlocking stations, many from the former B&O which had been slow to modernize. Two other towers closed as part of the immediate project involving the route west from Cumberland into the mountains toward Pittsburgh included Hyndman, Pennsylvania, in November 1998, and Viaduct Junction, Maryland, in January 1997. Interlocking towers once dotted the landscape, and five-mile spacing was not uncommon. In 1928, there were seven towers westward from Viaduct Junction to Sand Patch, a 32-mile stretch. All have now been closed.
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