Mike's Railroad Crossing Forum

wow. a LED already falling apart. how typical.

Not the LEDs fault (this time), just some loose connections is all.

what was wrong with the 2nd one?

illinoistrains wrote:what was wrong with the 2nd one?

Lights on the mast signal across the track wasn't lit at all.

I think they are only showing up because the FRA is paying for them.

I'm actually with Elton on this one. With the economy the way it is, I wouldn't be surprised to see incandescents coming back. LEDs are nice, especially the ball LED, but until costs can closely match incandescents, which may not be for a very long time, the LEDs will always have some opposition.

$4 to $10 per incandescent light is a lot better than over $300 per LED insert that General Signals charges.

Hopefully those will be given large discounts like the way the mini CFL lights are getting.


On another side note, California is looking to dump all incandescents and go completely LED one day. I'm not sure if it's a smart or dumb move. Sure they've had lots of blackouts over the years, and LEDs will drive down the power consumption a little, but is the 400x cost worth it?

On a related note, California is also considering outlawing the sale of incandescent bulbs completely, and eventually banning the CFL's (they contain mercury don'tcha know) in favor of LED household lights. Several communities are already switching streetlights to LED's.

Probably ban candles next, or put a big carbon tax on them or something.

CalPUC requires 12 inch LED's on all new grade crossings, but some RR's still sneak in the incandescents - usually WCH light heads in that arrangement.

considering LEDs are a lot more expesive, it sounds like just a money maker for california.

ER801 wrote:On that note, I'd like to say that I've seen more LED failures in traffic lights and such over the past year than all the incandescant ones I can think of.

Now why should we spend all this time and considerable money to replace our perfectly good ole incandescants, that are still working fine? Heck, I don't mind changing out a $4 bulb every several years. Thats my job. Sure is easier, and much more cost effective than changing out a $300-$400 LED head every several years, as seems to be the case.

I agree with Elton on this one also. Almost all of our traffic lights in this town have been converted to LED. I have started to notice some failures. Either the LED is completely out, or only partially lit. I have also seen some that strobe or flash almost like a flourescent light going bad.

The one difference is that traffic signals are on constantly, so some of the light heads rack up a lot more hours than they would as crossing signals.

The closest we've come to LEDs over here is LED gate lights (the ones that have the RACO 4" incandescent casing).

Some crossings can use them, especially if the incandescents are no where near bright, but with the exception of the GRS LEX-C plastic lights, all the lights near me seem to work fine.

So yeah, if the cost outweighs the benefit, it's really not worth it, especially since some LEDs end up shorting or burning out way too easily.