Mike's Railroad Crossing Forum

*originally recorded on 7-30-24*

Signal on the left: 4 pairs of Safetran 12x24 inch lights with Leotek EV Series LEDs, a WRRS mechanical bell, a Safetran gate mechanism, and RECO LED gate lights.
Signal on the right: 2 pairs of Safetran 12x24 inch lights with Leotek EV Series LEDs, a Safetran gate mechanism, and RECO LED gate lights.

After recording Church Street being tested, I was chatting with the signal maintainer when he alerted me to a southbound grain train that was approaching. As such, when it started to get close, he went onto his next crossing while I went down to this crossing to shoot it. After a little bit of waiting, my second train of the day came through: a southbound CSX grain train with a pair of ES44AHs for power.

This crossing is another great one, featuring a pair of old ACL signals at it that I believe would've originally been installed back in the 50s or 60s or so. In the early 80s, it seems, either the late-SCL or SBD replaced the gate mechanism on the closer signal with the current Safetran one. Then in the late-90s it appears, all of the lights and the gate mech on the far side were replaced with the current ones. Finally, sometime between 2015 and 2018 or so, CSX upgraded this crossing to LED.
Thankfully, despite how well modernized the crossing's been, the classic ACL signals still stand here with their original bell, at least for the time being. The WRRS bell here still sounds fairly healthy, if maybe a bit flat, which is nice to see. Sadly, if you want to film these signals, you'd better hurry as the clock may be ticking on them. Admittedly, I'm not sure when exactly the upgrade here will happen, if one ever will, as per street view, the Orange Conduit of Doom around this crossing has been in place since at least 2013! Amusingly, at least one of the pieces of conduit has disappeared in the decade since then, so I guess we'll just have to see what happens eventually.
I guess a crossing surviving over a decade after conduit first went in has to be some kind of record, especially since this one got an LED upgrade while the next crossing north of this one got replaced entirely during that time!