Mike's Railroad Crossing Forum

Also, the location of the bell has nothing to do with what brand the cantilever is. There's a RACO cantilever in Port St. Joe, FL that has the bell on top of the mast.

0333 wrote:Fun fact: The cable strayed cantilever in the link above is a later production one.

Makes sense. What's the difference between the earlier and later production runs? I would guess flasher design but that's about it.

freebrickproductions wrote:Also, the location of the bell has nothing to do with what brand the cantilever is. There's a RACO cantilever in Port St. Joe, FL that has the bell on top of the mast.

Same goes for the Montecito St. Crossing in Santa Barbara, CA. I don't even think there's any holes visible for wiring.

Here's a picture of the early cantilvers:

While here's the later:

As you can see, the early cantilevers are more rounded than the angular style of the later ones.
The other differences include the mounting of the cantilever lights and logo/junction box placement.

Hm...I'm also noticing there's more guardrail stanchions and a "split bracket" on the older design, as well as a modification to the lower bracket--one gusset wrapping around the mast at the midline of the cantilever mount, as opposed to two at the extremities of the mounting face in the later design. In fact, it looks a lot like the bracket on the later-generation truss cantilevers, implying Safetran did, in fact, make them and standardize parts around the same time.

Now all we gotta do is identify the variations between Griswold and RACO "lightweight truss" cantilevers...hmm...

EDIT: I may have found a spotting difference between an example of either--take a look at the base of the aforementioned RACO setup in Irvine and a Griswold Cantilever of the same design in Hollister. Note the differing mounting location of electrical boxes, and potentially differences in base design.

Not necessarily , since all the RACO cantilevers over here have the Griswold bases and electrical boxes design.

Im sorry for saying this alot, but what is the width of the main mast for the older production one as mentioned in the first post?

CSXtrainman13 wrote:Im sorry for saying this alot, but what is the width of the main mast for the older production one as mentioned in the first post?

It's not necessarily accurate, but my version of a RACO cantilever in Train Sim Modeler has a mast diameter of 9". Could be closer to 8" but I'm not sure.

ConductorWho wrote:

CSXtrainman13 wrote:Im sorry for saying this alot, but what is the width of the main mast for the older production one as mentioned in the first post?

It's not necessarily accurate, but my version of a RACO cantilever in Train Sim Modeler has a mast diameter of 9". Could be closer to 8" but I'm not sure.

Thanks, If there was a kind of signal like that I would go and measure it myself, but there is none of them around Denver.