Mike's Railroad Crossing Forum

Another Mexico Sub catch for this weekend, as well as another crossing in Odessa I've managed to film in action. I went over to Odessa to catch an eastbound I heard blowing it's horn for the crossings behind my house at around 11:45am. I hopped onto I-70 east and headed for the crossing in Odessa I wanted to film at. I decided to film the train at Dryden and 5th St. The train approached my position at around 1:20pm. This crossing is an interesting one. For starts, this crossing is located in the middle of a 4 way intersection with 3 gateless signals protecting this crossing. The signal on the far right, as well as the pair of side lights on the closest signal are for traffic crossing the tracks on 5th St while the far signal, and the bottom lights on the closest signal protect Dryden St. All 3 signals are from the Gateway Western era with various changes done to KCS within the years. According to a 2008 streetview of this crossing on google maps, all 3 signals once had pairs of L&W Industries 12x20 lights until sometime after 2008 (prior to the October 2013 streetview update) when the far signal got knocked down and so KCS replaced that signal with one that had a pair of safetran 12x24 lights. Crossing itself went unchanged until sometime in 2021 when KCS replaced the original incandescent lights to the current Leotek EV series leds. Unfortunately the L&W Industries lights on the closest signal got replaced with the current safetran 12x24s at some point as well (probably when the led upgrade took place). Fortunately the signal protecting 5th St retains its L&W Industries lights despite them having the leds in place. According to the old 2008 streetview image, this crossing was once double tracked since google went by while the old track was being ripped out. No idea as to when exactly the 2nd track was ripped out, but there are some remnants of the former trackage throughout Odessa, especially at Mason St, and 2nd St (MO Route 131). I will get to those crossings at some point as well as the other bell only crossing. Train itself was the eastbound MKCVN with es44ac 4850 leading and 4794 trailing.