Manual Net Barrier at KS RR Xing

[Brian556]

Now, here's a type of railroad crossing traffic control we haven't seen before. There are yellow metal posts on both sides of the road on either side of the crossing, and a net barricade that can be hung between them. There are also yellow signs that say "NO CROSSING WHEN BARRICADED".

Clark St Downs, Kansas: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.5027157 ... 312!8i6656

[freebrickproductions]

Seeing as there's two grain elevators right next to that crossing, what I'm guessing is that they do a lot of switching there, and probably spend a lot of time blocking the road, so they string up those nets to block the road while doing the switching.

[TheSignalMan2000]

That's interesting that there's still a couple of crossings in the United States that's still manually-operated.

But agreeing with FBP, the reason could be because of the constant trains switching on why the nets are used at this manually-operated crossing, better than being a passive crossing itself (no net or gate) where you could have an impatient idiot that will end up crossing in the middle of a switching, and no lights/gates where it doesn't waste a lot of electricity when a train sits over the crossing for hours or even days (although they can turn it off at the relay case or the signal)

[SirKrunch]

That's certainly another way of doing it.
I've been through a few towns around here where they have a setup like this. When they work the elevator tracks, they'll manually turn on the flashing lights and face the stop signs toward traffic. Being at the end of an industrial lead, it's not like there's ever a worry of a through train. Plus, it's a small rural town, so traffic counts would never get high enough to warrant a true active warning system.

Here's a crossing at Clarion, Iowa with two lights on one approach and a single light on the opposite. Unfortunately these appear not to be used anymore.

Bayard, Iowa makes use of a similar setup to Farnhamville at the Main Street crossing. Unfortunately Streetview has never gone through it yet.

[freebrickproductions]

That's certainly another way of doing it.
I've been through a few towns around here where they have a setup like this. When they work the elevator tracks, they'll manually turn on the flashing lights and face the stop signs toward traffic. Being at the end of an industrial lead, it's not like there's ever a worry of a through train. Plus, it's a small rural town, so traffic counts would never get high enough to warrant a true active warning system.

Almost looks like a French crossing with those signals, lol. Appears that those lights were meant to be used on block signals though.

Here's a crossing at Clarion, Iowa with two lights on one approach and a single light on the opposite. Unfortunately these appear not to be used anymore.

Some rare signals there, nice find!