Mike's Railroad Crossing Forum

*originally recorded on 9-1-22*

Signal on the left: 1.5 pairs of Safetran 12x20 inch lights with Electro-tech LEDs, 1 Safetran 12x20 inch light with an GE Dotted LED, a Safetran mechanical bell, a Safetran gate mechanism, and Electro-tech LED gate lights.
Signal on the right: 1.5 pairs of Safetran 12x20 inch lights with Electro-tech LEDs, 1 Safetran 12x20 inch light with a GE Dotted LED, a WCH Type 4 electronic bell, a Safetran gate mechanism, and Electro-tech LED gate lights.

On the morning of September 1st, I got up and went back west from Blue Springs over to Independence, MO, to do a bit of railfanning before striking back for home. Shortly after I got to this crossing on the UP Sedalia Subdivision, I heard an approaching train so I quickly set-up. It turned-out to be a westbound MNA mixed freight with an ex-UP SD40M-2 leading a KYLE SD40M-2 (that was rebuilt from an SD45)! Certainly a rather neat catch to start the day off with, always neat seeing patched units like the leader.

This crossing is also a rather nice one, featuring a very-early 80s MoPac install, which has remained fairly original. In the late-2000s, UP upgraded the crossing with Electro-techs LEDs. The signals then remained unchanged for the most part, though sometime between 2011 and 2017, UP replaced a couple of the Electro-techs LEDs here with the current GE Dotted LEDs. Finally, in 2020, the original WCH mechanical bell on the closer signal sadly died and was replaced with the current WCH e-bell. Since then, however, no major changes appear to have occurred here.
I'm not sure if the Safetran bell here is original or if its an 80s MoPac install, but I suspect it's original. Either way, it still certainly sounds quite nice. I'm also glad to see that this crossing still retains its old MoPac-era bell sequence, with the WCH e-bell starting at start-up followed by the Safetran mechanical bell starting when the gates begin to lower, and then both bells ringing again as the gates rise.
Hopefully these older MoPac signals remain unchanged for many more years to come, but either way, I'm quite glad I was able to record it.