1970 Railroad Crossing Safety Film

[TrickyMario7654]

Found this old Railroad Crossing Safety Video from 1970 and thought It would be worth sharing.


Plenty of vintage crossing equipment throughout the film. 8" lights, wishbone gates (both black & white and red & white), Teardrop bells, Grisworld gates, Wig Wags and many other cool stuff!

[freebrickproductions]

Plenty of Griswold Type B lights in that video as well, along with old locomotives, especially EMDs it appears. I spied a few SP Tunnel Motors in there as well.

Also, take a close look at the median signal shown at 2:55, is it just me or does it look like it has 12 inch lights?

It looks like the RACO Hydraulic gate mech at 3:41 also has a wooden gate, oddly enough! I guess this video confirms my suspicion that RACO was already around in the 1960s!

Also, a good close-up of RACO 8 inch lights at 4:23. Wonder if the possible 12 inch lights earlier in the video were also RACO?

The video mentions later that there were 225,000 crossings in the US. That number is now down to around 170,000, IIRC. Looks like a WRRS gate mech at 5:12 as well. I also love at how around the 6 minute mark, they mention the new Department of Transportation, to think that the DOT was new at the time is rather impressive. Looks like the traffic lights on the corner at 6:05 are Crouse-hinds Art-decos as well.

Looks like they filmed a lot of this in California, based on the double stop lines at a few of the crossings (something that only CA does, IIRC).

The flashing headlight on the (SP?) train at 7:29 sure is interesting. Never seen that before.

10:50 has a teardrop sound-effect played while the crossing has some old Griswold signals, including the bell. Another SP engine with a flashing head-light there as well. Probably why the SP used flashing ditch lights on their engines (pro-tip: if you ever see a UP engine with flashing ditch lights, that means it was most likely a former Southern Pacific engine).

12:13 has a wig-wag with the same Teardrop sound effect being played, despite the signal being a Magnetic Flagman Signal Co. wig-wag.

Thanks for posting this here!