Mike's Railroad Crossing Forum

I am new and I'm not sure when this will exactly go but,

I'm pretty much a 4th generation railfaner, my grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather worked on the railroad, so that got me started into trains and crossings

My grandparent's lived right next to a crossing in Canton, IL. My avatar picture is from that crossing. I spent many summers at her house when I was young and would always go running outside whenever a train came through during the day.

That track is still active, but probably only sees a couple trains a week now. Back in the late 70's, there would be 5 trains a day easily. There was also a small railroad yard (long gone now) and trains used to switch cars like at 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning. I would sit up looking out the window watching the engines go back and forth switching cars.

Man I miss those days....

Here you can find a video I took of that crossing a couple of years back. Their house was right across the street from where I shot the first video: http://www.rxrsignals.net/Phpbb3/viewto ... kjry#p6773

Well, I always liked trains since being a kid (option "B"), but it wasn't until running across some sites on the Internet (Mike's RXR website was one of the first) in 2006 that I realized that people actually actively sought out trains to photograph them.

I chose after stopping at a crossing, HOWEVER, my grandfather & great-grandfather DID work as railroad employees back when our town was bustling with railroad activity (VERY active railyard that later went under, but is now coming back to an extent), but I'm more interested in the signals (hence my crossing selection), while they were more interested in the trains themselves. My uncle (grandfather's son) has a TON of model trains at his house, so he's into it as well, so it does still run in the family.