Mike's Railroad Crossing Forum

freebrickproductions wrote: Wed Jun 15, 2022 10:41 pm

luke wrote: Thu Jun 02, 2022 5:08 pm Found this absolute gem of a crossing on Parker Creek Rd in Alturas, CA. All 8-inch lights, two teardrop bells, and two triangle gates.

Oh wow, excellent find! Still in service, I take it?

Used whenever Union Pacific runs to Alturas to interchange with the Goose Lake Railway, which happens weekly from what I've heard.

https://youtu.be/5AJ3MXYNRrk

Here is a very vintage signal in a park next to a model rr club, it’s from the burbank branch line

like charles city rd, this teardrop has survived the unthinkable. i dont know if its still there though
https://www.google.com/maps/@38.866853, ... 312!8i6656

ProFoamingBishop wrote: Sun Feb 05, 2023 9:57 pm like charles city rd, this teardrop has survived the unthinkable. i dont know if its still there though
https://www.google.com/maps/@38.866853, ... 312!8i6656

Gotta be an old C&O one, likely the third known to still be in service if it's still there. Satellite imagery is hard to tell, but it might be?

Came across this new video of a neat old cantilever crossing with a teardrop on the Wheeling & Lake Erie in Creston, Ohio. The W&LE train clears at just the right time to reveal a CSX train at the other crossing behind.

The other side has a Safetran mechanical bell which ironically would seem to be dead, while the teardrop works.

Glad to see that classic's still there! And yea, the Safetran bell on the other signal's been dead for years.

The same user also recently uploaded a few more videos of that crossing.

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.3049177 ... 384!8i8192
dont know if this was posted before but its a burger stop. would eat here and shake the poles of the signals

Not sure if this has been posted in this thread before (edit: must have been since it exists on the site), but the Monticello Railway Museum in Illinois has one on their crossing on "Iron Horse Place," the road which leads to their depot parking lot.

This was my first time hearing a working teardrop in action in person, and it was actually a bit disappointing. Nearly all of the ones I've heard in videos since becoming a "signal fan" and discovering this site way back in 2006 have had a distinctive slow ring with a prominent mechanical "clunk" between rings. This one rings quite a bit faster than most and sounds not much different from any other mechanical bell to me. The only distinguishing feature is the subtle "click" between rings, which is much more noticeable when the ring is slower as is more usual.



US&S Co. "teardrop" style crossing bell on the crossing leading to MRyM's parking lot (back view) by Andy, on Flickr

US&S Co. "teardrop" style crossing bell on the crossing leading to MRyM's parking lot (front view) by Andy, on Flickr

They have a display wigwag which also has one, which ironically appears to be in quite a bit better condition than the one that's in service.

It would appear both Illinois Central and Wabash RR were big buyers of these bells back when they were being made, so they would have once been quite common in central and southern Illinois. However, since most of those lines went to CN and Norfolk Southern respectively, nearly all of them have been replaced. The only ones I know of ever having existed in service in Wisconsin were on an IC branch line to Madison from Freeport, Illinois which has been abandoned since the mid-'90s. Per pictures I've seen, several of them were combined with cantilevered WRRS wigwags just like the one on display at Monticello. The last example of this combo to exist in service as far as I know was in Galena, IL on the ex-IC Iowa Division line across northern Illinois (the Madison branch came off of this at Freeport). At some point in the late 2000s the teardrop was replaced with a GS Type 2 e-bell, and then a few years later the wigwag itself was replaced with ungated flashing light signals.

Yeah, the surviving one on the S Line in Gaston, SC, has a similar speed to its ring as well. Thankfully the ones over on the A Line sound at a nice slow speed.

I will say, I doubt there are many crossing fans who can say the first Teardrop they ever saw/heard in person was a 1st Gen!