I swear I'm becoming a pro at finding these odd-ball crossings around the, well, area!
Today driving home from an interesting day on the EJ&E, interesting because of the wayside malfunction, I came across these newbies sitting at the College Ave station in Wheaton, IL. There are three of them including the one pictured. These pedestrian gates are new, like with in the past summer. They are all equipped with the strange black box (which is thick so I'm guessing it's more than a sign, but an LED sign), a loud speaker (hens the title of the thread), and an infrared box. It's very strange.
Some friends and me think it could the loud speaker could be a wayside horn. The Lisle Metra station tried it using the loud speakers on the platform as wayside horns, needless to say the town, including myself living only a few blocks from the station, were furious.
*UPDATE*
They installed a fourth pedestrian gate, but everything is still covered up (9/15/10).
*UPDATE*
They installed four of these at the President Street crossing. All 8 of them are still covered up except the gates at College Ave do not have the construction fence around them anymore. Gates have also been added.(9/19/10)
I'm hoping to go back today and get some more pictures.
I wasn't able to get pictures but I did bike past the two crossings. They were unwrapped but being worked on. The gates went down and the boards were uncovered for a few of them. They read like this:
