Mike's Railroad Crossing Forum

*originally recorded on 3-27-20*

Signal on the left: 2 pairs of Safetran 12x20 inch lights, a Safetran mechanical bell, a Safetran gate mechanism, and NEG gate lights.
Signal on the right: 2 pairs of Safetran 12x20 inch lights, a Safetran Type 3 electronic bell, a Safetran gate mechanism, and NEG gate lights.

After catching Amtrak 19, I continued my way west to the next crossing down the line and set-up here. Wound-up having to wait an hour and a half before seeing this next mixed freight, which I believe was NS 356 (I thought I heard a 256 over the scanner, but I'm pretty sure that ID would be for an intermodal). The train had a pair of AC44C6Ms for power, which was pretty nice.

This crossing, like the three crossings I recorded before, is also pretty nice. The signals here were installed by NS in the mid-1990s as well, and remained unchanged for at least 10 years. Then, in the mid to late-2000s (and certainly by 2013, when street view first came through), NS replaced the original Safetran mechanical bell on the closer signal with the current Safetran Type 3. Thankfully, nothing major has changed here since, and the Safetran mechanical bell on the far signal still sounds pretty nice. Sadly though, it sounds like it starts to struggle when the gates begin to lower, so hopefully it just needs a bit of TLC.
This crossing also has the last mechanical bell in Lincoln.

*originally recorded on 10-19-24*

Signal on the left: 2 pairs of Safetran 12x20 inch lights, a Safetran mechanical bell, a Safetran gate mechanism, and NEG LED gate lights.
Signal on the right: 2 pairs of Safetran 12x20 inch lights, a Safetran Type 3 electronic bell, a Safetran gate mechanism, and NEG gate lights.

After catching Amtrak 19, we continued west to Lincoln, AL, for our next train. After waiting for over an hour, we managed to get the fourth train of the day: NS 346 with an AC44C6M pulling on the head-end and an ES44AC working as the train's DPU, and a friendly crew aboard. Interestingly, this train was a little less than a mile long, as the defect detector heard in the beginning is about a mile to the west of this crossing.

Thankfully, since I last recorded this crossing in 2020, barely anything has changed to this crossing. In fact, the only change to this crossing since that video was the fact that the far signal had its gate lights upgraded to NEG LEDs, everything else here is still the same! Amazingly, this crossing also still retains its Safetran mechanical bell on the far signal. Admittedly, I'm a bit pleasantly surprised that this one is still here, as out of all of the ones I'd recorded back in 2020, this one easily sounded the worst, so I'd honestly expected to see it was gone now. However, I'm glad to see it's still around as it honestly seems like it sounds a little bit better now, even if it does still noticeably slow down when the gates begin to lower.

http://www.rxrsignals.com/Alabama/G-Q/L ... son_Trace/