Mike's Railroad Crossing Forum

*originally recorded on 12-14-21*

Signal on the left: 1.5 pairs of Safetran 12x20 inch lights with GE Uniform Look LEDs, 1 Safetran 12x20 inch light with a GE Dotted LED, a WCH mechanical bell, a Safetran gate mechanism, and NEG LED gate lights.
Signal on the right: 2 pairs of Safetran 12x20 inch lights with GE Uniform Look LEDs, a Safetran gate mechanism, and NEG LED gate lights.

While I was waiting on the local freight, I heard an NS 238 approaching as well. As such, I decided to try and hunt around for that train to see where it was waiting at, as well to figure out where I wanted to record it at. As I came up to this crossing, I saw that the local freight was still approaching it, so I quickly hopped out and was literally just barely able to get set-up for it. Here we see the local freight once more, with NS 238 waiting just to the south of the crossing.

This crossing is a pretty nice one as well, featuring another early to mid-70s Safetran install from the SOU. It appears that this crossing was largely original up until the 90s or 2000s, when NS replaced the original RACO/Safetran mechanical bell here with the current WCH mechanical bell. Then, sometime between 2008 and 2013, NS replaced all of the original RACO/Safetran 8 inch lights with the current Safetran 12x20 inch lights, though they were incandescent at the time. Following that, in 2016, this crossing was upgraded to LED along with most of the other ones on this line. Not entirely sure if that the GE Dotted LED here was part of this LED upgrade or installed later, but it's certainly a bit interesting to see it mixed in here either way.
One nice thing about this crossing though are the gate mechanisms. The one on the far side is one of the slightly more common Safetran gate mechs from the mid-70s, while the closer signal has an early-70s Safetran gate mech! The WCH mechanical bell here also sounds rather nice, so all in all, I'm glad I was able to record this crossing.