Mike's Railroad Crossing Forum

Was the model number in the title unfamiliar to you? Because, if so, I was the same way before picking this up today.

I was out and about running errands when I stopped at an oil change place along the Parkway here in Huntsville, which happened to be located right next to Firehouse Antiques. So I decided to wander around the antique store while my car's oil was being changed. Shortly before I was about to leave, I happened to spot some Harmon 12x24 inch lights from Madison Boulevard's crossing right outside of a pair of doors. After taking a look at them, I was about to head back inside when I spotted this bell, so I went ahead and bought it, thinking is was a WRRS Motor-bell. When I got home and opened it up, however, it turns out it was actually a WRRS 1203 bell, something I hadn't seen before! These bells, while they have a similar box on the back as a motor-bell, the box is used to mount a rectifier rather than to make room for a motor. Also, unlike motor-bells, which are designed to run off of 110VAC, these bells are designed to run off of 8V to 12V, in either AC or DC. However, if it's being run off of DC, the positive and negative wires have to be swapped from how they'd be positioned when running the bell on AC power. The bell is pretty much a standard WRRS bell for the most part for the rest of it, it appears.

It appears that there's a couple of differences that you could use to tell them apart without seeing the insides. First off is that a WRRS 1203 bell has a bolt sticking out of the back of the back, with no branding on it either. However, a WRRS motor bell, since it doesn't have anything mounted in the box, would lack this bolt and also has a branding on the back of the box. WRRS 1203 bells stop normally like other bells, while it sounds like WRRS motor-bells will have the bell slow down a bit as it stops, from what I can tell in this video:


WRRS motor-bells also likely wouldn't get use on crossings due to them requiring 110VAC power, while most crossings operate off of DC power. As such, I have a good feeling that most, if not all, of the WRRS "motor-bells" we've found in use on crossings may actually be WRRS 1203 bells. Anyways, here's the pictures and videos of the bell:
My WRRS 1203 Mechanical Bell by freebrickproductions, on Flickr
My WRRS 1203 Mechanical Bell by freebrickproductions, on Flickr
My WRRS 1203 Mechanical Bell by freebrickproductions, on Flickr
My WRRS 1203 Mechanical Bell by freebrickproductions, on Flickr
My WRRS 1203 Mechanical Bell by freebrickproductions, on Flickr
Schauer Manufacturing Corp. Electrox Rectifier by freebrickproductions, on Flickr
My WRRS 1203 Mechanical Bell by freebrickproductions, on Flickr
My WRRS 1203 Mechanical Bell by freebrickproductions, on Flickr

A "walk-around" video showing the various parts of the bell, and goes into a bit more detail about them (and when I think the bell was made):


The bell operating:

Interesting! I guess we'll have to double-check now to see if GSV bells are motor or mechanical now.

ZachL wrote:Interesting! I guess we'll have to double-check now to see if GSV bells are motor or mechanical now.

Well, I know this crossing features 1203 bells while this crossing features motor-bells.

It appears that the boxes on Motor-bells are shorter than the boxes on 1203 bells.

What makes the 1203 bell a 'Mechanical Bell' that doesn't make the Motor Bell a 'Mechanical Bell'?

ToledoRailfan wrote:What makes the 1203 bell a 'Mechanical Bell' that doesn't make the Motor Bell a 'Mechanical Bell'?

Personally, I'd say they're both mechanical bells, though the 1203 bell is a more "traditional" mechanical bell, as the motor-bell is motor driven rather than being operated by electromagnets.