Mike's Railroad Crossing Forum

*originally recorded on 4-18-23*

Signal on the left: 2 pairs of Safetran 12x24 inch lights, a WCH mechanical bell, a Safetran gate mechanism, and NEG LED gate lights.
Signal on the right: 4 pairs of Safetran 12x24 inch lights, a WCH mechanical bell, a Safetran gate mechanism, NEG LED gate lights, and a RECO incandescent gate light.

After catching the detector read-out for M526, I continued to wait at this crossing near Mt. Meigs for something to come. Thankfully, after over an hour and a half in total of waiting here, this CSX M602 came crawling through the crossing with a pair of ES40DCs pulling on the head-end and an AC44CW working as the mid-train DPU. Not entirely sure why they stopped on the crossing a bit, may have had something to do with some track work, but eventually they continued on.
Running right behind M602 was a northbound local freight, so I quickly moved my camera to a slightly different angle (where you can more easily see the pair of lights that aren't working) and started it recording. Not even 10 minutes after M602 had cleared, this local freight came crawling through with a YN3 ES40DC leading a YN2 Dash-8. After this, I went over to a crossing near Millbrook on the CSX S&NA South Sub to try and get that recorded before sunset, but, sadly, there seemed to be nothing in the area that was soon to come through in the half-hour or so I was there before continuing on back home.

This crossing is a very nice one, featuring a pair of gated signals installed by CSX back in the mid-90s. Thankfully, these signals are pretty much entirely original, save for the gate arms and (possibly) most of the gate lights. Both of the WCH mechanical bells here still sound rather nice, which is great to see. Also pretty nice to see is the fact that the closer signal still retains an incandescent gate light on it, which is also an older RECO one. Amusingly, one of the pairs of side lights on the closer signal also has both of the bulbs in it blown, which certainly looks a bit amusing IMHO. Not too often you see a pair of lights were neither one works!
I imagine that the maintainer for this part of the line will notice it before too long and fix those blown bulbs. Either way, this is still a very nice crossing, and I hope it continues to remain mostly original for many more years to come.

http://www.rxrsignals.com/Alabama/G-Q/Mt_Meigs/Sprott/