Mike's Railroad Crossing Forum

*originally recorded on 7-30-24*

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

After catching the Carolinian, I hit the road for Selma, NC, as I knew the northbound Palmetto was coming my way. After a little while of waiting, instead of Amtrak, my fifth train of the day wound-up being this northbound local freight with a lone ES44AH for power.

This crossing is another nice one, and is located right next to the Bailey Feed Mill in Selma. At the time, a bunch of cars on the CSX lead to the mill were blocking the road right behind my camera, so that made waiting here fairly peaceful.
It appears that, originally, there was once an old gated ACL install. However, in the late-70s, the SCL replaced the closer signal here with the current one. Then, in the 1980s, it seems the SBD may have replaced the bell on the far signal with the current Safetran mechanical bell. Later-on in the 1980s, however, CSX replaced the far signal entirely, but reused the Safetran bell onto the current signal. The crossing seems to have largely remained unchanged in the decades that followed, but sometime between 2016 and 2018, CSX upgraded this crossing to LED.
Thankfully, this crossing has remained largely unchanged since then. I'm glad to see the Safetran bell's still around here, as it is one of the last three Safetran mechanical bells on the CSX South End Subdivision, I believe. Thankfully, it still sounds rather healthy so hopefully it'll be here for a long time yet.
It appears that there used to be three tracks at this crossing, given how far back the closer signal here is from the two remaining tracks. The closer signal was also originally made with a 1st Gen WCH mechanical bell, based on the empty base of one mounted on the top of the mast. Street view doesn't ever show a bell here, so I have no idea when the bell was removed. My suspicion is that the old ACL signal on this side never had a bell, and, when the SCL installed the current signal here, they just took the bell off the replacement signal as there was no wiring for it. Still weird either way that they chose to leave the base up there though.