Mike's Railroad Crossing Forum

This crossing is on a one way street & the signal in the street view photo used to have a RACO/Griswold Mechanical bell & it was replaced with a Safetran Type 1 Electronic Bell!
http://g.co/maps/4bm8n

The crossing down the street had the same thing done! The WCH electronic bell was replaced with a Safetran Type 1!
Before
http://g.co/maps/9s2ez
After
http://g.co/maps/n3ss6

Caltrain927 wrote:This crossing is on a one way street & the signal in the street view photo used to have a RACO/Griswold Mechanical bell & it was replaced with a Safetran Type 1 Electronic Bell!
http://g.co/maps/4bm8n

The crossing down the street had the same thing done! The WCH electronic bell was replaced with a Safetran Type 1!
Before
http://g.co/maps/9s2ez
After
http://g.co/maps/n3ss6

Interesting that they still have EM gates on those crossings. And what is up with the cyclops pedestrian signals? Too cheap to put the extra light on those?

The cyclops signal on East Weber Avenue used to have a US&S 8 inch incandescent light. When I was there last July, it has since been replaced with either a 12" Harmon or WCH LED. I also noticed that the Safetran Type 1 E-Bell replaced the Western Cullen Hayes e-bell during my visit. I'm not sure if Safetran still makes Type 1s, or if Union Pacific is reusing them from signal yards.

There has been a high turnover of WCH series E-Bells(type 2's).The internal circuit board fails for unknown reasons overtime.I was told this by a UP signal technician in California.

ARIESHEART wrote:There has been a high turnover of WCH series E-Bells(type 2's).The internal circuit board fails for unknown reasons overtime.I was told this by a UP signal technician in California.

Salt that gets put down from the road crews in the winter or along the coast salt air will ruin any e-bell.
E-bells last 5 years at best. WCH e-bells have the best design, their first design had the circuit board open which caused problems, but their new one is covered in plastic, there are some out here that have been up for almost 10 years. Have had speaker problems with a few, but have yet to have one with a bad board, although anything is possible.
GS on the other hand, If it rains real hard the bell will screw up and the bell is made out of PVC pipe.
N.E.G. Bells are what are being ordered now they work find and are nice, but I haven't figured out how to get the volume at a tone I like. They are way to quite, Only time will tell how good they are.

Plain and simple, WCH "sirens" are junk.

MD2020 wrote:Plain and simple, WCH "sirens" are junk.

No the sound is weird, everything else is really nice.