Lets clairify a few things here: To "Pre-Empt" means to activate before . (Pre) To "Interconnect" means to connect together , IE, activate at the same time. Traffic signals are not truly pre-empted, unless there is a predictor unit inside the case with AX outputs to activate an outside source (Traff...

Safetran is actually a leader in quality and sound output with E bells, but you don't see many of them, because of the circuitry inside, it makes them very expensive. (They have a verticle sense and a "Bell sense" feature that allows a crossing monitor to sense if the bell is working properly withou...

WCH E "bells" (sirens) sound awful anyway, and do not duplicate a bell sound, it is more like an alert siren. (When a real bell strikes, the tone/sound falls, a wch noisemaker strikes then ramps up, unlike any real bell) WCH mechanical bells, at least the ones made in the past several years, are che...

Thats because anything made by WCH in the past several years is cheap junk.

I know firsthand, I am a signal maintainer, and I have to work with that junk sometimes.

Don't talk bad about a DMD just because you're not familiar with it. They are built like a tank and will survive a lot of times where a PMD won't. If you know how to adjust one correctly, they will give you years of trouble free service. They perform just like a PMD, they are just not dominate on th...

Oh yea, MI was some junk. I used to trash MI lightheads, until LED inserts became widespread. Now I save them, because they are excellent for installing LED inserts into. On that note, last set of WCH lightheads were falling apart in the installers hands, the pot metal was breaking on the elbow and ...

Nope, it was new from WCH, was in the brown box, straight from their factory, sir. I don't now how else to make it any more clear, their stuff is plain junk nowadays, I have 2 more they recently installed a few months ago that sound like they are going out as well.

We were discussing crossings with gates. Some Railroads have them just ring because it's a no-brainer. They don't have to configure the bell through the X relay or contacts in the gate mechanism, usually out of laziness. There is no real benefit to be offered to leave them ringing, just added annoya...

Your point?

A bell is warning that the crossing is activating, and the gates are descending. The train horn picks up audible warning after they are down, then there is no need for a bell any longer after that.

Still doesn't make anything any safer.

And bells ringing upon gate rising is unsafe and a poor practice.