Mike's Railroad Crossing Forum

luke wrote:
I figured out which configurations produce the other three bell patterns:

Bell isn't wired through X relay or gate motor:
Bell sounds continuously.

Wired through X relay only:
Bell sounds from startup to just before gates rise.

Wired through gate motor only:
Bell(s) sounds when gate(s) are in motion.

Not exactly.

You never wire anything to a "gate motor".

Ringing continuously is wiring the bell straight to the GP circuit. -Takes no brains to do that. Whenever the lights flash, the bell rings. Not a good practice. Leaves a bell ringing all the time, which is unnecessary, and promotes complacency.

Ringing "in motion" is through the GP, but broken through the mech. contacts. -Takes a slight bit of effort to do, but you get a bell start to ring when the gates rise, which is unsafe.

Ringing only upon activation, and while the gates lower, and cutting off and not ringing again until another activation, is through the X relay, broken through the mech contacts. ...This takes a little brains to do, but is the intelligent way to do it, as when you hear a bell ringing, you know a gate is about to come down, clear the crossing.

Here are a couple of videos I took last night...

They were taken with my digital camera...which I think has a pretty good quality for videos. The sound is a bit scratchy...but it's ok...

A GT Train at Oak St. in Wyandotte, MI:



An NS train at Oak St. in Wyandotte, MI:

Looks like someone needs to come out and replace a dead incandescent on that first video.

...And run the bell through the mech. contact and shut it up while it isn't needed.

Dang, that was about a 5 second gate drop there. That is not only non-compliant, but it is against good common sense.

Anyway, what kind of camera is that? ...Have you ever heard of a "Mino HD"? I hear they are real good for picture quality also.

(And someone needs to put a hat on, har har)

ER801 wrote:...And run the bell through the mech. contact and shut it up while it isn't needed.

Dang, that was about a 5 second gate drop there. That is not only non-compliant, but it is against good common sense.

Anyway, what kind of camera is that? ...Have you ever heard of a "Mino HD"? I hear they are real good for picture quality.

(And someone needs to put a hat on, har har)

I figured out why they don't wire the bell through the XR...It's because when Conrail (The other railroad CN is interconnected with) drops out CN's crossing...it only drops the XGPR. It doesn't drop the XR relay...so the bell would never sound unless there was a train on CN's track. Conrail woudn't get any bell on gate drop. Also, it's CN's policy to have the bell ring when the lights are flashing...so I heard...(Canadian Policy)

The camera I used to record this is the Canon PowerShot A560. It suprised me a bit...I didn't expect this good quality...

I'm looking to get a Hard Disk camcorder though...as those are pretty cool...and very easy to use.

Nice camera.

...they could still run the bell through the contact in the mech, though. ...But that would make too much sense...

Oh, I have a hard disk camera, but it is messed up. ...I bungee corded it to the front handrail on a locomotive, and the vibration screwed up the hard disk drive in it. ...So I find out now that those things are very suspectible to vibration, I won't get another one.

If they did wire it through the gate mech...it would still ring on gate rise...which is stupid too...so I'd just say to leave it as it is. This crossing though...has a SSCC....all electronic...and it's really screwed up anyways...because Conrail's crossing fires when CN's drops...which makes absolutely no sense...if you saw at the end of the video...all 8 signals are flashing for no reason...

It's really irritating when there's a malfunction...because you don't know right off which track is down...unless you look at CN's back lights. If theirs are off...it's Conrail's problem.

It's really complicated to explain without you actually being here to see it for yourself. I bet there aren't any other setups like this in the country...

My head hurts

ER801 wrote:My head hurts

So does mine.

LOL...it's not that bad...

Anyways...here are a few more videos I did yesterday evening...and it was some pretty hard work too...

It's in three parts...because of the YouTube upload limit of 10 mins each...