Mike's Railroad Crossing Forum

*originally recorded on 7-3-20*

Signal on the left: 2 pairs of Safetran 12x24 inch lights with Leotek EV Series LEDs, 1 pair of Safetran 12x24 inch lights with Dialight Ball LEDs, 1 pair of Safetran 12x24 inch lights with Dialight Low Wattage LEDs, a Safetran Type 2 electronic bell, a Safetran gate mechanism, and RECO LED gate lights.
Signal on the right: 2 pairs of Safetran 12x24 inch lights with Leotek EV Series LEDs, 1 pair of Safetran 12x24 inch lights with Dialight Ball LEDs, 1 pair of Safetran 12x24 inch lights with Dialight Low Wattage LEDs, a General Signals Type 2 electronic bell, a Safetran gate mechanism, and RECO LED gate lights.

After chasing Y115 around the Savannah area a bit, I got back to documenting crossings. When we came up to this crossing, we saw the signals both ways were lined for some trains to come through, so we decided to set-up here and see if we could get at least one of them. After a bit of waiting, the train that we'd catch came through. It was a southbound CSX mixed freight with an ES44AH leading (with a K5LA) and an ET44AH working as the mid-train DPU.

This crossing is a bit of a neat one, IMHO, though it is a bit more on the boring side than the others I recorded on this trip. The crossing itself is pretty much located on the border between Garden City and Savannah, though I decided to count it as being in Garden City.
The signals themselves appear to have originally been a pair of gated cantilevers installed by the SCL in the 1970s, but, in the early 2000s, CSX upgraded at least the mast lights to Safetran 12x24s and replaced the bell on the closer signal with a GS Type 2. Then, a bit later on in the 2000s, both cantilevers here were replaced with the current ones, with all lights on the cantilevers having Dialight Ball LEDs, and the bell on the far signal was replaced with the current Safetran Type 2.
The crossing then remained mostly unchanged until sometime between 2012 and 2016 (though most likely around 2015), when the remaining incandescent lights on the gate masts were upgraded to LED as well. It then remained unchanged yet still until 2019, when the gate mast on the far side was replaced, with the old SCL-era Safetran gate mech being replaced with a newer one (though the lights and bell were re-used).
The only change here since then is that, for some reason, CSX decided to go through and replace all of the Dialight Ball LEDs in the front lights on both signals with Leotek EV Series LEDs. Not entirely sure why this was done, but it least to a bit of a neat LED mixture at this crossing.
This crossing also has a rather nice sound at it as well, IMHO, due to the bells here. For whatever reason, the GS Type 2 here was set to a faster speed than they usually are, which is rather neat to see. All in all, this may be a bit of a more boring crossing, but I'm still quite glad to have been able to record it.
This crossing is also more or less located right next to the Savannah Amtrak Station, which seems like a bit of an odd location for it, IMHO.