Mike's Railroad Crossing Forum

*originally recorded on 12-19-21*

Signal on the left: 2 pairs of Safetran 12x24 inch lights with Leotek EV Series LEDs, a dead NEG electronic bell, a Siemens gate mechanism, and NEG LED gate lights.
Signal on the right: 2 pairs of Safetran 12x24 inch lights with Leotek EV Series LEDs, 1 pair of US&S 8 inch lights, a WRRS mechanical bell, a Safetran gate mechanism, and NEG LED gate lights.

After catching the southbound mixed freight, Elliot and I hung around Kingstree for a little while (think Elliot at some point chose to head up towards Lake City, though), but eventually I decided to head-up to Cades as nothing seemed to be in the area. When I got up here, however, this CSX local freight Elliot had seen tied down on the siding here earlier had its head light on and it sounded like there was a crew onboard. As such, I decided to set-up here and wait, and after a little while of waiting, the train got going. As such, I was able to catch it here with it's rather nice lash-up: a YN2 AC44CW leading a YN3 ES40DC! I tried to chase this down to Kingstree, but it stopped on the north side of town and then worked an industry there until after the sunset, at which point I'd decided to head on back to our hotel over in Manning for the night.

This crossing is a pretty nice one as well, featuring what appears to be an ACL install from the 50s. It seems that these were largely original until some point in the mid to late-90s, when CSX replaced all of the main lights here with the current Safetran 12x24s (though originally incandescent). At around the same time or in the 2000s, CSX then replaced the original WRRS gate mech on the closer signal with the current Safetran one. The crossing then remained unchanged for a few years, but sometime between 2008 and 2019, a few changes occurred here: the 12 inch lights were upgraded to Leotek EV Series LEDs, the far signal had its original WRRS gate mech replaced with the current Siemens one, the far signal had its base replaced with a modern WCH one, and an NEG e-bell was added to the far signal. Based on the design of the Siemens gate mech (which is the current one with a cast-on logo), I believe these changes most likely all occurred sometime closer to 2019 and 2008, most likely in 2018 or 2019. Dunno if the NEG e-bell was ever hooked-up or just simply died rather young though, as you can hear pretty well that it doesn't seem to ring at all. The bell also appears to be rather loose, as it noticeably wobbles when the gates lower and rise.
Thankfully though, despite these changes, the closer signal still retains a bit of its original equipment. For starters, it still has a WRRS mechanical bell which sounds rather healthy (and will hopefully remain here for many more years to come).
However, the star of the show (and my favorite part about the crossing) is the side lights, which are still the original US&S 8 inch lights! Amazingly enough, despite the main lights having been replaced in the 90s and more recently upgraded to LED, the side lights are still largely untouched and incandescent, and even still retain a pair of the original vandal guards on them! No idea how these have managed to hang around here, especially given the fact that this is the A Line, a pretty major CSX line, but I'm certainly glad that they have. Hopefully these get to remain around here for a good while longer as well, but either way, it was nice getting to see some more again and I'm glad I was able to record them as well.