16th Street, Pell City, AL

[freebrickproductions]

*originally recorded on 3-27-20*

Signal on the left: 2 pairs of Safetran 12x24 inch lights, a Safetran Type 3 electronic bell, a Safetran gate mechanism, and NEG gate lights.
Signal on the right: 2 pairs of Safetran 12x24 inch lights, a Safetran gate mechanism, and NEG gate lights.

After catching NS 28D, I wasn't hearing anything really coming, so I just continued documenting crossings in Pell City. I knew that Amtrak 20 was coming (and running rather late), so after documenting the last crossing just west of town (and knowing that they had already passed Leeds), I decided to head back to this crossing to catch them. After a little while of waiting, AMTK 20 came through with another pair of P42DCs and a friendly engineer! This was also my first time catching both Crescents in the same day, and was also quite a nice train to end off on.

The crossing itself was also nice to end off on, as this crossing features a pair of signals installed by NS in the 1980s. The crossing was pretty much all original as well until sometime between 2008 and 2013, when the original Safetran mechanical bell here was replaced with the current Safetran Type 3. A bit of a shame that it was replaced, but the crossing does still have the bell ring when the gates rise, so that's quite nice to see. There's also a few other crossings of interest in Pell City that I'd like to record (even if none of the mainline ones have mechanical bells), so I'll have to see about getting back here at some point.

[freebrickproductions]

*originally recorded on 10-6-24*

Signal on the left: 2 pairs of Safetran 12x24 inch lights, a Safetran gate mechanism, and NEG gate lights.
Signal on the right: 2 pairs of Safetran 12x24 inch lights, a General Signals Type 3 electronic bell, a Safetran gate mechanism, and NEG gate lights.

After catching Amtrak 19, we continued east over to this crossing in Pell City, since I needed to get a newer video of it still. After at least an hour or so of waiting, we were able to get our third train of the day: NS 191 with an NS AC44C6M leading an NS ES44AC on the head-end and a BNSF SD70ACe and a BNSF ES44C4 working as the train's DPUs.

The only major change to this crossing since I last recorded it back in 2020 was that NS replaced the Safetran Type 3 e-bell here with the current GS Type 3 e-bell. Thankfully, nothing else here appears to have changed, and this crossing still has the bell set to ring when the gates rise!

http://www.rxrsignals.com/Alabama/G-Q/Pell_City/16/