Incandescent lights...

[AndyWS]

...in general are becoming rather hard to find in Wisconsin, especially over the last half-decade as crossing upgrades have really accelerated even on the Class II/III railroads such as the Wisconsin and Southern (WSOR, owned by Watco since 2012 when the individual who had been president and CEO since the late '80s sold it) and Progressive Rail's Wisconsin Northern up north of Eau Claire.

One of the few parts of the WSOR system that the crossing upgrades have been slow to touch is their segment of what was once the Milwaukee Road line from Milwaukee to Green Bay, which the state acquired after previous owner CN wanted to abandon it in late 2004 (CN actually still owns parts of it and the railroads share it via a somewhat convoluted trackage rights arrangement).

North of the city of Plymouth to the end of state ownership/WSOR operation at the south side of Kiel, trains are somewhat few and far between as there are no regular shippers. The track is sometimes used for car storage but otherwise sits silent, except for last Friday when a Santa Train event featuring the Soo Line 1003, a restored 1913 ALCo 2-8-2, was held in Plymouth. The train then shoved the ~5 miles north to Elkhart Lake for another Santa Event there, before running back to Plymouth after dark for the Christmas parade there.

In Elkhart Lake there is a rather cool 4-way intersection crossing that still has four gateless signals with incandescent lights, and 8" ones at that! These have become VERY rare on the WSOR system after being still quite common just a decade ago. They appear to be an odd mix of Safetran, RACO and WRRS lights.

https://goo.gl/maps/jX2pwW7FVBk

Street View shows the lone bell among the four signals was a Safetran hybrid in 2009, but at some point since was replaced with a GS "Type 1" electronic. The train shoved just far enough north to block this crossing while it was parked in Elkhart Lake for the Christmas party.

Just south of there is a cantilever crossing with 12"x 24" incandescent lights and what seems to be either a dead or very quiet GS e-bell. Those are the only two signalized crossings in Elkhart Lake. I shot the train going through there as it left town back to Plymouth. The last crossing in the video is on the site. It hasn't changed much since I shot those pictures way back in 2007.



Unfortunately the upgrade push has affected that line to some degree. The wigwags that were in Plymouth proper are gone.

[freebrickproductions]

There's still a fair amount down here in the southeast (and eastern US as a whole), though that's probably because NS didn't adopt LEDs until 2014 and CSX, despite adopting LEDs almost a decade prior, is pretty slow at upgrading their crossings to LED, though it seems that they've started work on wholesale upgrading the crossings in Tennessee to LED it seems (especially since just about every CSX crossing in Nashville is LED now).

Oddly enough, the railroads down here that seem to be the biggest at upgrading to LED are the shortlines.