Calhoun Street #1, Dillon, SC

[freebrickproductions]

*originally recorded on 12-21-21*

Signal on the left: 2 pairs of Safetran 12x24 inch lights, a Safetran gate mechanism, and NEG LED gate lights.
Signal on the right: 2 pairs of Safetran 12x24 inch lights, a dying WCH mechanical bell, a Safetran gate mechanism, and NEG LED gate lights.

After chasing I038 back up to Ghio, I decided to go back down to Dillon to see if anything else was coming on the A Line, as well as at least getting the other crossing here on Calhoun Street. Here, I met-up with Elliot again, though after a little while he decided to head to a crossing a bit north of Dillon that also had a WCH mechanical bell. After close to an hour of waiting here, and thankfully during a break in the rain, this southbound mixed freight came flying through Dillon with a CM44AC on the head-end and an ES44AH as the mid-train DPU. After this, I went and got some lunch, and as it was still very wet around here, I decided to strike on out for Cary, where we'd be spending the next two nights.

This crossing is a pretty nice one, though admittedly, I mainly picked this one because it had incandescent lights with a mechanical bell and was also on the same road as the other crossing I'd recorded here. Another factor was that I don't believe it'd been recorded yet, lol.
It appears that originally, there were a pair of signals here installed by the ACL years ago, I believe most likely back in the 1950s based on the fact that there's only one bell here, though it could've been earlier. At some point, I believe in the 1990s (though potentially in the 1980s), CSX replaced whatever bell was here at the time with the current WCH mechanical bell. Then, in the 2000s, CSX replaced both signals here entirely, but chose to re-use the WCH mechanical bell here onto the current signals. Since then, no major changes appear to have occurred here.
Sadly, the WCH mechanical bell here is in pretty rough shape, clicking quite a bit before it starts actually ringing, though even then it still clicks very loudly and also misses at least one beat before the gates fully lower. The bell itself also physically damaged, with a small chunk having broken off from the base of the bell, which can be seen in the video. By complete coincidence, the WCH mechanical bell at the crossing Elliot recorded this train at was also dying, though his sounded much worse than mine.
Next to this crossing is a CSX signal dump at what appears to have originally been the local ACL freight depot. While I was here, there was another WCH mechanical bell (no idea where from) being worked on by the local CSX signal maintainer, so I wouldn't be surprised if they intend to give this bell some TLC as well, or plan to replace it (or the one at Elliot's crossing) with the WCH mechanical he'd been working on.
Either way though, this was still a pretty nice crossing and I'm glad I was able to end off with it.