Mike's Railroad Crossing Forum

It's very interesting to see what you can find on railroads. Usually, it's expected to find Western-Cullen Hayes equipment on the Union Pacific, but I found something else... US&S. Now, I've been told that UP experimented with different companies, but it's interesting to see the stuff still up and in use.

Some background info:
The Union Pacific line is the Villa Grove Subdivision. It runs all the way to Chicago. The crossing signals with this equipment can be found (so far) from St. Anne, IL to (so far) Grant Park, IL.

Let's start off with something you wouldn't expect to find on a UP crossing... a US&S mechanical bell:

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A lot of the US&S equipment found on these crossings are just the lights.


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Now, a lot of crossings have similar light setups... WABCO/US&S lights with UP LEDs. Additionally, that US&S bell was the only one I found out of 10+ crossings. All others either have WCH/GS e-bells, Safetran mechanical, or WCH mechanical.

Let me know if your UP line has any US&S stuff like that. I haven't seen it on the Joliet Subdivision to the west. If you want an example of what's on the Joliet Sub., look here:
http://www.rxrsignals.net/Illinois/A-K/ ... od/Center/

Cheers,
Joshua

Union Pacific/Missouri Pacific until 1997 tested equipment from a lot of different manufactures.
MP was a big user of GRS and Transport Products, while Union Pacific on the other hand used WRRS/WCH.
In 1982 when they tried to merged, crossings out here were installed with MI, WRRS, US&S and Safetran.

On January 1, 1997 UP officially took over and I guess liked WCH equipment because that's all they installed from 1997-2010
Just recently UP started installing new crossings with NEG/Saftran and that's all they seem to put up at new crossings now.
Union Pacific has got stock piles of old signal parts just like any other railroad so if you see "new" WRRS bases or little stuff like that it doesn't mean its brand new ordered, It could have been sitting for 10 years in a warehouse.

Yep, that's what I just proved. I looked up accident history on one of the crossings, before CSX and UP, this line used to be MP and L&N.

Thanks for the info!

Cheers,
Joshua