Mystery Boxes at a Crossing in Dothan

[freebrickproductions]

On my way back up from Florida on July 8th, I stopped in the Florida area to get all of the crossings there documented. While I was there, I stopped at the Alice Street crossing which is an otherwise almost-pure late-SOU cantilever install (complete with the original GRS gate mechs!), that, for some reason, had a pair of boxes mounted to the masts just under the cantilever arm. One of them was pretty much completely barren aside from the wires coming in and out of it, some of which had been cut. The other one had several antennas and a camera or two mounted to it (depending on if the small tube next to the camera bulb is another camera or a flash tube).

Here are the pictures of the boxes and the crossing as a whole:
Mystery Box With Camera(s) by freebrickproductions, on Flickr
Mystery Box by freebrickproductions, on Flickr
Alice Street Railroad Crossing, Dothan, AL by freebrickproductions, on Flickr

Never seen anything like this at any other crossing and was curious if anyone else had seen these elsewhere. Also, does anyone know what they are/were for?

[freebrickproductions]

Okay, so according to people in the Railroad Signals group on Facebook (one of whom was a signal maintainer for CSX on what's now the ATN), these were for a program where Emergency Services people could know ahead of time if a crossing was blocked or not.

Apparently the ATN would've gotten these as well at a few of their crossings, one of which would've been Dublin Avenue in Birmingham, AL, shortly after they took over the line from CSX, but Google Street View doesn't show any of these cameras at it:
https://www.google.com/maps/@33.5358005 ... 312!8i6656

Seeing as it involved two different railroads in two different parts of Alabama, I'm guessing it was a program the state of Alabama was experimenting with in the early 2000s, but I'm guessing the program failed (or at least didn't work as well as hoped), leaving these as likely the only remaining examples in the state (as far as I can tell).