Today if one walks or lives around this area there is still a lot of train activity as engines pulling hundreds of cars transporting anything from bulldozers to oranges and apples, mill around waiting their turns to go on. It has been suggested by King Plow tenant Box Development that an internet cam setup should be put at this junction so residents can see all the train activity instead of just a lot of clanking and clanging. Residents of the White Provision Building can look down from 5 and 6 stories above and see the waiting trains--the intermittent clanking and clanging very quickly ceases to be noticeable except perhaps during phone calls. There used to be a switchman and a control tower at this location but now all switching is done electronically from Jacksonville, Florida. The concrete switching station was demolished in 1996 to discourage vagrants from camping in it.

From the memories of Robert Haywood of Murray Company/E.Van Winkles Gin and Machine Company:

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Atlanta Water Works Huff Road Miller Union Stock yards H.G. Poss and Company The White Provision Company The United Butchers Abattoir Northside Tavern King Plow Arts Center Foster Street Arts and Antiques E. Van Winkle Gin and Machine Shop
Howell Interlocking
According to Paul Grether librarian for Southeastern Railway Museum this railroad wye is called Howell Interlocking because it interlocks four railroad tracks that meet at this location (today 3 CSX lines and the Southern Line --the name Howell originally comes from a family who owned a mill north on Howell Mill Road near Peachtree Battle). Historic Brookwood Station by classic architect Neil Reid, the only passenger train depot still in existence in Atlanta, is a couple of miles east on the Southern Line. A vast array of tracks many widths wide to the west is the Pegram-Inman Yard.
Map above from http://www.terraserver.com
At Howell Interlocking until the 1960s was a complex of cattle feeding pens which existed because of a humane law mandating that animals traveling on trains had to be fed and watered every 8 hours. For many years trains carrying animals stopped regularly at this location to feed and water livestock. Sometime in the 1960's livestock began to be shipped to Nebraska to be grain fattened and many slaughterhouses in the South closed down including those surrounding the Miller Union Stockyards in the Artery. In the 1960's a vagrant accidentally set fire to this deserted feeding pen encampment and multiple fire trucks were required to squelch the blaze which threatened to spread into the Murray Company Complex.