Mike's Railroad Crossing Forum

*originally recorded on 5-21-21*

Signal on the left: 3 pairs of Safetran 12x20 inch lights, a Siemens gate mechanism, and NEG gate lights.
Signal on the right: 4 pairs of Safetran 8 inch lights, a Safetran mechanical bell, a Siemens gate mechanism, and NEG gate lights.

On May 21st, I made a (technically return) trip out to Rome, in order to see about getting some of the older signals there documented and filmed. I decided to set-up at this crossing first as I wanted to make sure I'd get it in the morning. When I first got here, the signal to my south was red, but after about an hour of waiting, it upgraded to clear and just a few minutes after, this southbound grain train came rolling through with a Dash-9 leading an SD70ACe and an AC44C6M!

This crossing is quite a neat one, originally having featured an SOU install from the early to mid-1970s. A bit unusually for signals of this age, the crossing was entirely 8 inch, including the overhead lights on the cantilever here. The one exception to this though was on the original signal on the far side, which featured a pair of older Safetran 12x24 inch lights as the side lights on it, for some reason. At the time, these were the only 12 inch lights at the crossing.
The signals here remained entirely unchanged until sometime around 2015, although the cantilever here had gotten damaged sometime prior to 2007. In about 2015 or so, NS went through and upgraded part of this crossing, with the far signal being replaced entirely. At the same time, the closer signal here had its gate mast entirely replaced as well, though thankfully, the rest of the signal has been left untouched (for the most part).
The cantilever is pretty much the main reason why I chose to shoot this crossing first, as all 8 inch cantilevers, especially ones from the 70s and later, are quite rare to find here in the southeast, especially on ex-SOU lines. They seem to have possibly been slightly more common on ex-L&N lines, but even then, most surviving ones of those seem to be up in Kentucky. Thankfully, the cantilever also still retains its original 1st Gen Safetran bell, which still sounds quite healthy so hopefully it remains in use for a good while longer. Certainly seems quite rare to find one of these in use on a busy Class I mainline either way, though.