Mike's Railroad Crossing Forum

*originally recorded on 4-20-23*

Signal on the left: 3 pairs of Safetran 12x20 inch lights, a Safetran mechanical bell, a Safetran gate mechanism, NEG gate lights, and a RECO gate light.
Signal on the right: 4 pairs of Safetran 12x20 inch lights, a Safetran mechanical bell, a Safetran gate mechanism, and RECO gate lights.

After catching NS 384 in Stanton, I continued on documenting the rest of the crossings on the NS 3B North District. I'd heard 384 was possibly meeting another train somewhere, so, when I got to this one, I decided to set-up and wait some more. After waiting about an hour, NS 385 finally got here, though had to stop and set-out some cars for the Autauga Northern to pick-up at some point. As such, here we get to see them doing one of the switching moves with an NS AC44C6M and a BNSF ES44DC for power.

This crossing is another very nice one, and, like with the previous crossing, is another mid-90s NS install that still remains largely original, though not entirely. It appears that sometime after these were installed, one of the side lights on the far signal was struck and replaced with a (re-used?) Safetran 12x24 inch light. Then, sometime between 2013 and 2022, the side lights on the far signal were replaced again, this time with the current pair of Safetran 12x20s. Thankfully, both of the original Safetran mechanical bells are still here and still sound fairly healthy, so hopefully they'll remain around here for many more years to come, especially since this is one of the last two crossings on the NS 3B North District (and I believe the NS 3B as a whole) with mechanical bells. Either way, I'm certainly glad I got to record them.
Amusingly, the tip gate lights on both signals, which are both from RECO, are dead at this crossing.