Stern Avenue, Donalsonville, GA

[freebrickproductions]

*originally recorded on 7-28-19*

Signal on the left: 4 pairs of Safetran 8 inch lights, a Safetran mechanical bell, a Safetran gate mechanism, and RECO LED gate lights.
Signal on the right: 4 pairs of Safetran 8 inch lights, a Safetran mechanical bell, a Safetran gate mechanism, and RECO LED gate lights.

While I was waiting for the signal maintainer to arrive at the malfunctioning crossing, I decided that if I saw a car pull up to the crossing, I'd get out of my car, and check the line for them to see if a train was coming. Well, after a few hours of waiting and flagging drivers through, a truck pulled up to the crossing, so I hopped back on out of my car, and went to check the line, when I saw a very early A724 approaching! As such, I told the driver to wait, quickly hopped back in my car, and raced on over to this crossing. Fortunately, I was able to beat the train here, where we see he had a pair of AC44CWs for power, with a YN2 one leading an older one in YN3b! This was the first YN2-painted leader I've seen on the CSX in literally over a year!

The crossing here is a very nice one and one that I had really wanted to record. The signals here were installed in the 1970s by the SCL, and haven't had any changes since, making it a pure 70s SCL install! It seems like these installs are getting rather hard to find these days, at least relatively unchanged like this. Most of the side lights have nicely faded to white, which is cool to see. Back in 2016, all of the lights here were just as badly faded, though it appears that CSX touched up the main lights and one of the side lights between 2016 and 2018, according to Google Street VIew. Not sure why the job wasn't finished, though I guess the maintainer ran out of paint and just hasn't bothered with coming back and finishing the job, not that I mind. If I had to take a guess, this crossing is going to be getting an LED upgrade in the very near future, so the maintainer probably didn't feel the need to finish repainting the lights just to replace them later. Both Safetran mechanical bells here also sounded very strong and healthy, which is an added bonus. Right behind my camera is US 84.

[freebrickproductions]

*originally recorded on 4-2-22*

Signal on the left: 4 pairs of Safetran 8 inch lights, a Safetran mechanical bell, a Safetran gate mechanism, RECO LED gate lights, and an NEG LED gate light.
Signal on the right: 4 pairs of Safetran 8 inch lights, a dead Safetran mechanical bell, a Safetran gate mechanism, and RECO LED gate lights.

This was the fourth crossing I recorded Q650 at. I'd originally thought about going for the pure SBD install on the westside of town (since that one was one I still had yet to record), but when I saw that this guy was still pretty much a full late-70s SCL install, I decided to go for it instead. Part of why I went for this one was that I always love recording these older Safetran installs, and all because I hadn't recorded any 8 inch lights on the Dothan Sub yet, lol.

As you can, not too much has changed to this crossing since I recorded it back in 2019. In fact, the only major change I noticed here was that the tip gate light on the far signal was replaced with an NEG LED, and nothing else to this crossing has changed, thankfully. Due to the clouds, I was able to record on this side of the crossing this time around, and you can see the extremely faded side lights on this signal pretty decently as a result. Unfortunately, the bell on the closer signal has since died at some point, but CSX still has yet to replace it. Hopefully they fix it rather than replacing it, but I ain't gonna be surprised if someone comes here at some point and finds that it was replaced with an NEG e-bell. Glad I've been able to get two videos of this crossing while it still had the original bells, though.

http://www.rxrsignals.com/Georgia/A-F/D ... lle/Stern/