Mike's Railroad Crossing Forum

*originally recorded on 8-24-22*

Signal on the left: 4 pairs of Safetran 12x20 inch lights with Dialight Ball LEDs and a Griswold mechanical bell.
Signal on the right: 4.5 pairs of Safetran 12x20 inch lights with Dialight Ball LEDs and 1 Safetran 12x24 inch light with a Dialight Ball LED.

On the morning of August 24th, I got on up and went towards downtown Rapid City to document a couple of crossings that I thought were of interest on the RCP&E. While I was down there documenting the crossing on 2nd Street (which has a Safetran Type 1 e-bell), I saw a RCP&E crew member pull-up and line the switch at the east end of the wye for a train that was about to be leaving Rapid City. As such, I decided to head up to this crossing I'd stumbled across earlier to record it. After a couple hours of waiting, we see this RCP&E train leaving Rapid City with a trio of SD40-2s for power. After this, I documented a few more crossings in South Dakota and continued onto Butte, MT, for the night.
Think this was my first time catching G&W-painted SD40s, FWIW.

This crossing is a rather nice one, featuring a pair of older Safetran cantilever signals that were installed by the C&NW back in the 1980s. It appears that these replaced some older Griswold signals, as the cantilever features a Griswold mechanical bell on it. It appears that all of the lights here were installed as 12x20s, save for a singular 12x24 on the rear overhead of the closer signal, for some reason. The crossing remained largely unchanged after it was installed, all the way up until the 2000s (and certain prior to 2007), when the DM&E upgraded the lights here to LED. Since then, however, thankfully no changes have occurred to this crossing.
I probably could've set-up at the crossing with the Safetran Type 1, but I decided to go for this crossing instead as it still has a mechanical bell. I'm glad I did, however, as while I was waiting here, I heard a signal maintainer tell the dispatcher that they were taking the 2nd Street crossing out of service for maintenance work.
I'm honestly quite glad I got to record this crossing as well, as I only stumbled across it by accident. The classic Safetran cantilevers here look quite nice, and the Griswold mechanical bell here still sounds very nice and healthy. Hopefully these signals get to remain around for many more years to come, but either way, I'm quite glad I was able to get then when I did.