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(rshsdepot) Spring Hill Tower, Terre Haute, IN

-From Trains.com News Wire...

Indiana tower group to move former CP. Spring Hill Tower to museum next week

One down, one to go.

The Haley Tower Historical & Technical Society in 1999 successfully moved
its namesake tower 50 feet, from the crossing of CSX’s CE&D Subdivision (the
former Chicago & Eastern Illinois, later Louisville & Nashville) and the
former Conrail St. Louis Line (at one time the Vandalia Line, then
Pennsylvania Railroad, and Penn Central) in Terre Haute, Ind., to the Wabash
Valley Railroaders Museum.

Next week it will move the former Canadian Pacific Spring Hill Tower from
the junction of CP. and CSX lines in Terre Haute to the museum, 5 miles to
the north.

The society took ownership of Spring Hill Tower on June 1 last year from
CP., which sold the white, wood-frame structure to the society for $10. The
tower, CP’s last lever switch tower in the U.S., guarded the crossings of
three lines for 89 years on Terre Haute's south side. Spring Hill Tower was
a busy place, as the Chicago, Terre Haute & Southeastern, Chicago & Eastern
Illinois, and the Evansville & Indianapolis railroads crossed there. The
tracks now belong to CP. and CSX.

The CTH&SE built the current Spring Hill Tower in 1910, replacing an earlier
one erected in the late 1890s along a towpath of the old Wabash & Erie
Canal. Through acquisitions, the tower became the property of successors
Milwaukee Road and Soo Line, before CP. bought out full Soo ownership.

CP. closed the tower, which housed the dispatcher for CP’s otherwise
isolated southern Indiana trackage, in 1999. (CP. trains reach the Terre
Haute area from Chicago on CSX trackage rights). The signaling and switches
were converted to remote control, and the dispatchers were transferred to
Jasonville, Ind. The tower still holds 16 of the original 40 4-foot-tall
metal levers that operators used in order to throw switches and line
signals.

The society has raised half of the $40,000 cost of moving the tower. Those
wishing to assist the society’s fund-raising efforts can make contributions
to the Spring Hill Tower Fund at any Terre Haute First National Bank
location. Or, they can be mailed to the society at P.O. Box 10291, Terre
Haute, IN 47801 c/o Spring Hill Tower.

For further information contact historical society President Bill Foster at
(765) 832-9117, or visit the group’s Web site at www.haleytower.org

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