Blackwell Street, Durham, NC

[freebrickproductions]

*originally recorded on 12-22-21*

Signal on the far left: 3 pairs of Safetran 12x24 inch lights, a Safetran Type 3 electronic bell, a Safetran gate mechanism, RECO gate lights, and a RECO LED gate light.
Signal on the far right: a Safetran gate mechanism and RECO LED gate lights.
Signal on the near left: 2 pairs of Safetran 12x20 inch lights, a Safetran gate mechanism, and RECO LED gate lights.
Signal on the near right: 2 pairs of Safetran 12x24 inch lights, a Safetran gate mechanism, and RECO LED gate lights.

After catching the local freight, I returned back to this crossing to get the final Piedmont train of the evening, as I wanted to get one last train here. After about an hour of waiting, the Piedmont arrived at the Amtrak station just west of here, causing this crossing to time-out in the process.
After a few minutes at the station, loading and unloading passengers, the final Amtrak Piedmont of the day departed for Raleigh with the same pair of F59PHs that I'd caught in Cary earlier in the day, with one on the head-end and one on the rear. This was also my final train of the day, so I went and picked-up my dead (and thankfully since recovered) hard drive and returned to the hotel in Cary.

This crossing is another nice one, and I'm glad to have been able to end the day off with it. It appears that, in the early to mid-1990s, NS installed a pair of gated signals here with one cantilever and one mast signal. Then, in the early 2000s, the crossing was quad-gated with a pair of gated signals being added to the off-sides of the crossing, though it appears that NS left the signals that were already here largely unchanged at the time. After that, in the mid-2000s, NS replaced the bell that was here with the current Safetran Type 3. Since then, no major changes have occurred to this crossing.
IMHO, it's a bit unusual to see that NS left the two older signals here mostly alone when they made this a quad-gate crossing, seems like they typically would've replaced at least the mast lights. Don't mind it too much, however, as it does make the crossing a bit more interesting than it would be otherwise. It was also neat to see that the cantilever signal here still retains a pair of RECO incandescent gate lights on it.