Williams Avenue, Madison, TN

[freebrickproductions]

*originally recorded on 12-29-17*

Signal on the left: 2 pairs of Safetran 12x24 inch lights, an NEG electronic bell, a dead WCH mechanical bell, a Safetran gate mechanism, and RECO LED gate lights.
Signal on the right: 2 pairs of Safetran 12x24 inch lights, a Modern Industries mechanical bell, a Safetran gate mechanism, and RECO LED gate lights.

This crossing is a pretty nice one, with a bit of a unique set-up on the far side. It appears that the crossing was upgraded from the previous signals it had in the early 1990s, but CSX re-used the bells from the old signals. Later on, sometime around 2010 or 2011, if I had to hazard a guess, the older Safetran gate mechanism on the near signal was replaced with a Safetran S-60 gate mechanism. Then, sometime in early 2013, the WCH mechanical bell had died so CSX replaced it with an NEG electronic bell. However, oddly enough, CSX decided to mount the new bell on the side of the mast while leaving the old bell on top of the signal! Seems like a rather cheap way to do it, IMO, but whatever works I guess.

[freebrickproductions]

*originally recorded on 6-21-24*

Westbound signal: 2 pairs of Safetran 12x24 inch lights with Leotek EV Series LEDs, a dead WCH mechanical bell, an NEG electronic bell, a Safetran gate mechanism, and RECO LED gate lights.
Eastbound signal: 2 pairs of Safetran 12x24 inch lights with Leotek EV Series LEDs, a Modern Industries mechanical bell, a Safetran gate mechanism, and RECO gate lights.

After I got lunch, I continued on up to Madison for another train. When I got here, however, I saw that there was a train lined north up onto the Mainline Sub at Amqui. After a bit of waiting, the signals also lined for a northbound up onto the Henderson Sub, and, a little bit after that, I was able to catch my fifth train of the day: CSX I026 with an ET44AH leading an ES40DC on the head-end, and another ET44AH working as the mid-train DPU.

After I026 came through, I decided to set-up again on the other side, as I was kinda curious as to what was going to head-up the Mainline Sub, especially since it sounded like it might've been M576 coming. Sure enough, after a bit of waiting, I was able to catch my sixth train of the day: CSX M576 with an ES44AH leading a CM44AC and a GP40-2 on the head-end with CSX 1875, the P&LE heritage unit (another ES44AH), working as the mid-train DPU! I definitely wasn't expecting to get another of CSX's heritage units on this day, so this was quite the nice surprise to see, even if it was just a mid-DPU!

Since my last visit to this crossing in 2017, a few changes have occurred here, as you can probably see. Sometime between visits to this crossing by EthantheRailfanner in 2018 and 2019, CSX upgraded the signals here to LED, and repainted both of them (including the dead WCH mechanical bell here). Since then, however, no further major changes have occurred to this crossing, which is nice to see, especially since it means that the MI mechanical bell is still here. One rather cool change here, which appears to have occurred at some point in the last few years, happened when the westbound signal's gate arm here was replaced with the current vertically-striped one. For whatever reason, CSX used some older RECO incandescent gate lights at this crossing! Definitely nice to see some more incandescent gate lights go up at a CSX crossing like this, especially of the earlier design!
For some reason in the first video, I suspect due to the heat, not too long after the leading locomotives passed, the crossing began to deactivate while the train was still crossing! Again, I'm not entirely sure why this happened, but it was definitely a bit strange to see. At least it let me hear the MI bell here a bit more, I suppose? In the second video, the crossing did not try to deactivate while the train was passing.

http://www.rxrsignals.com/Tennessee/G-Q ... /Williams/