Mike's Railroad Crossing Forum

Recorded 5-19-20. Just as I got done filming Atherton Rd in action as well as doing a crossing tour there, Myles texted me saying there was some KCS trains coming on the Pittsburg Sub. I decided to go down there and catch one. There were 4 trains lined up on the Pitts Sub, but we sadly missed out on 3 of them, luckily we caught this northbound grain train which would eventually become an eastbound for the Mexico Sub. We was originally gonna film this train at Truman Rd #2 as I wanted to redo a video of that crossing, but when we crossed 12th St #2, we noticed that the train was already almost at the crossing. We decided we'll film this train at 12th St. This crossing is a really interesting one as it features dual 1st gen wch mechanical bells! Sadly one of them is dying. For some reason the bell on the closest signal doesn't ring until the gates start to go down. Plus the bell on the closest signal rings from startup until the gates begin to rise, but I think that bell is supposed to stop ringing as the gate lowers as it appears the gate isn't down all the way. The bell for some reason stops ringing for a bit and briefly ring again before the gates went up, again, leading up to the theory that the bell on the closest signal is ONLY supposed to ring when the gate is lowering like how the bell does on the far signal. We would later catch this train again at Harvard Ave #2 in Independence, but before we got to that crossing, we had to go check out the whole chaos that was going on with the Sedalia Sub as the Up we caught earlier that day was still stopped and caused a major back up.

Two vids combined into one. After catching the grain train at Johnson Dr, I was originally planning on catching it again over in Alma at MO Route 20 since it had a hybrid bell, but I decided to ditch that plan since I got word that the KCS OCS Special was going to go south on the Pittsburg Sub. So instead I hopped back onto I-70 and headed out west over to 12th St #2 just in time to catch it. I did meet up with two other railfans since they came out for the OCS. Shortly after the OCS rolled by, we heard another horn blowing for some crossbuck crossing over by the Independence Ave overpass. That train turned out to been a southbound UP coal train. As you can tell, the crossing has seen some upgrades since I last filmed here in 2020. For starts, the incandescent lights on both signals have been replaced with Leotek EV series Leds. Not only that, the gate lights have been replaced too. The new gate lights are Alstom-Aurora Leds which replaced the previous RECO 4 inch Leds. No idea as to why KCS replaced the gate lights for. Fortunately both 1st gen wch mechanical bells live on for now.