Mike's Railroad Crossing Forum

weatherdan882002 wrote:

Attaching a cantilever-mount gate to an old cantilever.
Interesting way to upgrade a crossing.

IDK if it was an upgrade or not - it may be the origional. But our city has a BIG train past, which is sadly only a shadow of what it used to be. There used to be a lot more crossings in town, but most have closed, becoming dead ends, or overpasses. With a history that goes as far in the past as ours does, it's hard to tell what's origional and what's not, but as far as I can tell, that cantilever-gate setup is the origional.

I think I'll get in on this one as well. Here's the new 4-quad install at the Jordan Elevator just East of Boone, IA on the UPRR Mainline--Boone Sub. The cantilevers were reused thankfully from the previous install, though the lightheads were swapped over to LED's in the process.

Morrison Missouri UP Sedalia Sub.

mike wouldn't like that setup because the front lights and gates are infront of the cantilevers and they are not centered.

That's right, unfortunately a lot of setups are like that.

would make the best sense to put the front and rear lights on the cantilever and just have a separate mast for the gate behind the mast of the cantilever.

All of your questions make sense, but I probably should of told you guys that UP added the Cantilevers in 1998. Before that, the crossing only had the gates.

I felt that the cantilever should've gone in front of the gates, and put the crossbuck and all lights on the cantilever, leaving none on the gate mast.

Plus, I think they do that so that the mast the gate is mounted on doesn't block the lights mounted on the cantilever mast, so if they mount the lights on the same mast as the gate, there's zero chance of the gate mast blocking the lights. IDC what they do, so long as the lights are mounted so that they're level with eachother.