After more than 80 years in service, the “Hoboken Horni” traffic light at the corner of Washington St. and 1st St. was finally replaced in April 2018. The signal collecting community was keenly interested in the fate of this classic and exceptionally long-lived piece of American road history. As soon as he knew of Hoboken’s plan to refurbish Washington Street, my good friend Chris McNally (a dedicated volunteer at the Baltimore Streetcar Museum) contacted the city in the hope of working out a plan to preserve the signal. He got the attention of some historic minded people in the city government and ultimately got the Hoboken Historical Museum on board with saving the light.
Chris, Randy Trezak (a.k.a., 3liteguy), Mike Natale, and I installed the light in the museum on October 20, 2018. Our gratitude goes out to the kind people at the museum, especially Bob Foster, for graciously making this possible, and for understanding and even sharing in some of our giddy excitement over the project. We even got a nice little gift from them!
Getting Started
- Arrival… photo by 3feetfromthestreet
- Chris finally meets his old pal.
- Bob and Randy, ready to get the party started, photo by Chris McNally
- Me, Randy and Mike….and the star of the show. photo by ChrisMcnally
Cleaning and Rewiring
The glass was in great shape, but covered in decades of soot. Just a quick cleaning made a huge difference.
We replaced all of the feed and interconnecting wires, and put shrink tubing over the socket wiring. The feed wires were a disaster…amazing this light was still functioning on the street like this!
- Cleaning the reflectors. photo by Chris McNally
- What a mess! Photo by 3feetfromthestreet
- Mike and Chris get started. Photo by 3feetfromthestreet
- Mike sleeving the socket wires with shrink tubing. Photo by 3feetfromthestreet
- Circuit board controller made by Sean Breen, wired up by Randy. Photo by 3feetfromthestreet
- My Dr. Frankenstein moment. Photo by 3feetfromthestreet
The Big Hoist
This signal probably weighs upwards of 200 pounds. Getting it hung from the museum ceiling was a challenge that had some tense moments. Randy did a masterful job as we helped from below, but mostly just watched in awe.
- Randy sets up the span wire.
- strapped signal is brought up to the saddle. Photo by Chris McNally
- Photo by Chris McNally
- Mike holds the behemoth at an angle for a while. I forgot why we needed to do that.
- Almost done. photo by Chris McNally
- In place…
Mission Accomplished
It was a long day, but one I’ll never forget. I look forward to walking the waterfront in Hoboken again soon and stopping by to see the museum. You should too!
- Come back and see me again, will ya? photo by Chris McNally