Vilas Road (Cottage Grove, WI) gets signals

[AndyWS]

Yesterday I happened to go down Vilas Road on my way between Madison and Stoughton. It crosses the UP-owned/WSOR leased & operated branch from Madison to Cottage Grove. The crossing is the 2nd crossing east of the County Highway AB crossing that is on the site.

Until recently, the crossing was passive; with crossbucks, Yield signs and orange flags for visibility:

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=43.0 ... 2142857143

Here's a picture that shows a train going through the crossing in its old configuration:

http://andyws.rrpicturearchives.net/sho ... id=1184820

Anyway, when I went through there yesterday I saw the crossing now has brand new gated signals, 12" x 24" lights with what look like Harmon fading L.E.D.s, and a General Signals electronic bell (presumably Type 2) on each signal.

[Crossingman18]

did they really need that many flags? Makes the crossbucks look like they are wearing orange hats.

[SirKrunch]

Judging by the track condition at the time... Was this a case where the UP let the line go to shambles and hardly used it... so when WSOR took over...perhaps they put up the flags to draw attention to the crossing and an upcoming increase in rail traffic again???

[AndyWS]

The line is still a lightly trafficked branch (out and back turn every other day at 10 MPH), and doesn't connect to anything but a couple industries in Cottage Grove. There has apparently been a visibility problem at the crossing, with people driving into the side of trains at night, but I think the flags did fine for that. The new signals are overkill, IMO.

[SirKrunch]

Hmm... well they could always have put up this little Gem that BNSF uses when they need to block off crossings for a long period of time...