AL 25, near Vincent, AL

[freebrickproductions]

*originally recorded on 5-5-24*

Signal on the left: 2 pairs of Safetran 12x20 inch lights and 1 pair of Safetran 12x24 inch lights.
Signal on the right: 2 pairs of Safetran 12x20 inch lights and a General Signals Type 3 electronic bell.

On May 5th, I got on up and got out to do some railfanning in the Birmingham area before heading home. I'd originally planned on railfanning the P Line on this day, but, the day prior, I found out that the two trains that typically run it (378 and 379) had sadly begun running it at night usually. As such, I first went over and visited the RJ Corman crossing in Coosa Pines, which had recently been upgraded to gateless cantilever signals (which I needed to get documented for the site). While out there, I heard something going through on the CSX Lineville Sub, so I decided to head west to investigate. While heading through Childersburg, I saw this 379 going north on the P Line, so I chased it on up to this crossing. I got helped-out by the fact that a gondola full of scrap metal (seen at 4:47) tripped the hi-wide just north of Childersburg, but it got going again before too long when the crew figured it wasn't anything worth worrying about. Anyways, here we see NS 379 rolling north out of Childersburg with an AC44CW leading a Dash-9 and another AC44CW for power. There was a friendly crew aboard who gave a horn salute as they passed as well, which was nice.
I'd decided to focus my efforts more over on the CSX side of things on this day, nor did I think I'd be able to chase it up AL 25 given how twisty it is. As such, after this, I let it go while I headed for the CSX Lineville Sub.

This crossing is a pretty nice one, featuring a modernized pair of gateless signals from the Central of Georgia. These signals are some old WRRS ones, and appear to have originally had a full set of cast-iron WRRS 8 inch lights and a WRRS mechanical bell on them. Between 2008 and 2009, however, NS replaced the bell here with a General Signals e-bell, I believe a Type 2. Then, sometime between 2009 and 2013, all of the lights here got replaced by the current Safetran 12 inch ones. After that, the crossing remained unchanged for at least another year, when the GS e-bell here was replaced by a Safetran Type 3 e-bell sometime between 2014 and my first visit here in 2020. Finally, sometime between 2020 and 2023, NS replaced the Safetran Type 3 e-bell here with the current GS Type 3 e-bell, I suppose we'll get to see how long this one lasts.
Either way, despite all of these modernizations to the signals over the past two decades, these old CofG signals are still going strong here, which is great to see. The crossing also has a neat angle at it, thanks to how sharp of an angle the tracks here cross at. This side would honestly be good for a morning-time southbound, should I ever be lucky enough to shoot one, with the curve on the north side of it. Either way, I'm still glad I was able to film this crossing, the P Line ain't the easiest one for me to be able to shoot trains on.

http://www.rxrsignals.com/Alabama/R-Z/Vincent/AL25/