Fostoria first in the world in
centralized rail traffic control

by Leonard Skonecki

It cost $600,000 in 1927. It was the first of its kind in the world. It was installed right here in Fostoria.

“It” was the first “CTC,” centralized traffic control system, for regulating trains along single track railroad. CTC enables a dispatcher to control and direct trains by signal indication in both directions.

Prior to the invention of CTC, trains were governed by written orders and timetables. If a train got off schedule, two trains headed in opposite directions might find themselves meeting head-to-head on a single track with no siding in sight. Delays were common, accidents not unheard of.

Even when trains ran on time, the train that was to yield the right of way had to stop at the siding while a crew member threw the switch manually so the train could swing onto the siding and wait out the train with the right of way.

With CTC, signals activating lights on a panel in a control tower would be tripped as a train passed certain switches, signals or stations. A single dispatcher could control miles of track.

When two trains approached one another, the dispatcher could simply throw a switch and shunt one onto a siding, allowing the other to pass safely. The train on the siding could then resume its route with minimal delay.

On Monday July 25, 1927, officials of the Toledo & Ohio Central and its parent company, New York Central, gathered at the control tower near Jackson and Buckley Streets and activated the system.

First in the nation
A train rolls past the train control tower near the intersection of Jackson and Buckley Streets in 1967 in Fostoria. The control tower was the first centralized traffic control system installed in the U.S., and was first put to use on July 25, 1927.

Now a dispatcher, sitting at a five-foot long control panel would govern all traffic along a 43 mile stretch of rail from the Whitmore Yards, just south of Toledo, all the way to Berwick, near New Riegel. 

One of the officials on hand for the occasion was the NYC’s J.J. Brinkworth.

Brinkworth realized the potential gains in efficiency to be had if the system worked. He had gone to Rochester to meet with CTC’s inventor, Sedgwick N. Wight of the General Railway Signal (GRS) Co. Brinkworth and Wight ended up at Wight’s house until the wee hours hashing over the details.

According to a 1979 GRS publication, Brinkworth told the Association of American Railroads in 1947, “The final date was set to install centralized traffic control on the Toledo and Ohio Central and put it into service.

Needless to say, we were all over in Fostoria, Ohio, and we watched the progress of the various signals being put in.”

The atmosphere was aquiver with excitement. Soon trains were going to negotiate that single track stretch without orders.

“I recall very distinctly,” said Brinkworth, “as we had supper in the hotel at Fostoria and got through, I said to the gang, I do not know what you fellows are going to do tonight, but I’m going over to the tower at Fostoria and stay there until I see a non-stop meet.”

A non-stop meet was the grand slam of rail traffic control, a pass so smooth and well-coordinated that the train on the siding wouldn’t have time to come to a complete stop before the train with the right-of-way passed and the train on the siding could start regaining speed to proceed.

“Well, they all decided that if the boss was going over, the rest of the gang had better go, too,” Binkworth said. “So we went to the tower at Fostoria in the evening. The dispatcher was there and he was just filled up with enthusiasm on this new gadget called centralized traffic control.

“Along about 10 o’clock, he yelled right out loud, ‘Here comes a non-stop meet!’ Well, we all gathered around the machine and watched the lights that you all know about, watched the lights come toward each other and pass without stopping.”

Sedgwick Wight was 48 when his invention was first used here. In 1971, he was posthumously given the Elmer A. Sperry Award.

The award committee said, “Mr. Wight’s concept of decentralizing the safety features while centralizing the control facilities ushered in a new era of safe and efficient train operation.

“His concept was put to practical use on July 25, 1927 on the Toledo and Ohio Central (now Penn Central) Stanley and Berwick, Ohio. The dispatcher at the control panel in Fostoria remotely controlled the switch operating mechanisms and signals along the 40 miles of railroad.”

It was said an experienced dispatcher could tell what time it was by looking at the configuration of lights on the panel. Incidentally, that original panel is now the property of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

Reaction to Wight’s creation among railroaders was swift. According to the Fostoria Daily-Review, when trains rumbled past the Jackson St. tower that first day, “Brakemen and conductors passing by the new dispatcher’s office gave waves of approval and smiles of satisfaction today because it is an added guard not only to their safety but also to their passengers.”

Brinkworth was glad he made that evening visit. When he gave that little talk to the Association of American Railroads in 1947, he was looking back 20 years to that July day in Fostoria.

“That to me, and to you, was history on American railroads, the first non-stop meet on single track without train orders, of course, that we know of,” he said. “We waited at Fostoria until the southbound train arrived there and you never saw such enthusiasm in your life as was in the minds and hearts of that crew, the first non-stop meet of which they had ever heard.”

According to Trains magazine, “We tend to take CTC for granted today, but no other railway engineering breakthrough of the 20th century approaches it in importance.”

The old New York Central tower on Jackson Street is still there, a bit run down now. But 75 years ago, railroading history was made on that spot here in Fostoria.