Palmer's Cove
US&S Style-C, 502A time code cTc machine, from the New York, New Haven, & Hartford Railroad.
This machine was located in SS119 (Groton) and controlled the remote interlocking east of the tower at Milepost 128.

The tower is still standing - you can find a photo of the tower and the interlocking diagram here.



Note the signal indications are white instead of green - if you look closely at the builders
photos below, you can see that this was so from the day it was delivered. Also the track
indication lights are doubled up - for redundancy in case a lamp would fail. Several early
PRR and NYNH&H machines featured this double lamp arrangment on their machines.

Builders photo from US&S. "Palmer's Cove" was originally named "Midway", and only had one station
of controls. A second control station and the new model board was added by the New Haven sometime
later. The photo is dated 12-19-1941:


This machine is fully restored and operates four field stations of 502A code:

Back of machine, showing the code equipment. The top (smaller) unit is the 502 LC (Line Code), unit, which transmits and receives the codes. The bottom (larger) unit is the storage unit, which stores all the indications displayed on the front, and also contains the starting and station select relays to determine which station is coding. Click here to hear an indication code cycle and bell! The Bell is not visible - it is to the left behind the storage cabinet.

US&S 502A code uses a series line circuit, in that all field locations were wired in series with the office.
It was capable of 35 field locations with 5 controls and 7 indications at each station.
Codes are comprised of Long and Short steps - total coding time about 4-5 seconds.

The field location for Palmer's Cove is pictured above. While the machine only has two control stations - it requires two additional indication stations for all of the track indications. There is one field LCS (Line-Code-Storage) unit (the larger unit) on the shelf, which is station 245. The three smaller units are "pups" which add more stations to the field LCS - they are stations 246, 247, and 248. There is also a local control panel (Harmon) and all the application relays are on the panel full of icecube relays - two Basic Stamps simulate train movements.