Crawford Avenue, St. Francis, WI

[freebrickproductions]

*originally recorded on 11-16-23*

Signal on the left: 2 pairs of Safetran 12x24 inch lights with Electro-tech LEDs, a Griswold mechanical bell, a Safetran EM gate mechanism, and RECO LED gate lights.
Signal on the right: 2 pairs of Safetran 12x24 inch lights with Electro-tech LEDs, a Safetran EM gate mechanism, and RECO LED gate lights.

After I caught LBU51, I hung around waiting for LBU54 to leave for the Kenosha Sub and/or the Marsh Job to work a nearby branch line, but sadly neither seemed to run south of Butler. However, after a few hours of waiting, Brenton81 alerted me to something getting lined north off of the UP Kenosha Sub in St. Francis, so I raced on over to this crossing at the north end of the line to get it filmed. After a while of waiting, I was able to get this northbound lite power move, which I believe came from the coal-fired power plant on this line, coming through the crossing with an AC45CCTE leading a trio of AC44CWs, an SD70ACe, and another AC45CCTE.

This crossing is another great one, featuring another pair of old C&NW-era EM signals at it. It appears these EMs were installed in the 1980s by the C&NW, most likely replacing an older pair of Griswold EMs the C&NW had here, as the signals feature an old Griswold mechanical bell that I believe was reused from the older install here. Originally, back when this was two tracks, the lights were mounted lower, but, in 1989, the second track here was removed and the C&NW raised the lights on the masts as a result. Since then, the only major change here was UP upgrading the crossing to LED at some point in the 2000s, with no major changes to the crossing since then, thankfully.
The Griswold bell here sounds like it's a bit on the flat side, but still sounds fairly decent over all. The backgrounds on the lights here also look rather nicely faded. The crossing also still features a pair of increasingly-rare diagonally-striped gate arms, which are great to see. Hopefully these classic signals remain here for many more years to come, but, either way, I'm glad I got to film another pair of EM signals in action.