Mike's Railroad Crossing Forum

*originally recorded on 2-22-25*

Signal on the left: 2 pairs of Safetran 12x20 inch lights and a General Signals Type 3 electronic bell.
Signal on the right: 2 pairs of Safetran 8 inch lights.

After I caught 174 at Hotwater Road, I went back down to the Subway I was at earlier and finally got myself some lunch. Once I'd eaten my lunch, I went back up to this crossing, where the wayside signal just north of it showed that a southbound was already on the way, so I went ahead and got set-up. A few minutes later, my sixth train of the day came rolling through: NS 167 with an AC44C6M leading a pair of ES44DCs and another AC44C6M on the head-end and a third AC44C6M working as the mid-train DPU.
Just before (and just after) the crossing activates, you can also hear the defect detector about two miles to my north reading-out for the train.

This crossing is a great one, and is easily one of the best, if not the best, crossing along the NS CNO&TP South District, IMHO. The signals here were originally installed back in the 1970s by the Southern Railway, though in the late-90s or 2000s, NS replaced the bell here with a General Signals e-bell. The crossing remained largely unchanged until sometime between 2015 and 2020, it appears, when the far signal had its bell replaced with the current GS Type 3 e-bell. At about the same time, NS also upgraded the lights on that signal with a reused set of Safetran 12x20s from the 90s, though strangely (and thankfully) left the closer signal entirely unchanged.
Since then, thankfully, no further major changes appear to have occurred to this crossing, which is great to see. I'm especially glad to see that the closer signal here is basically entirely unchanged, even still retaining its original Safetran 8 inch lights! As a result, this crossing is the only other one on the CNO&TP South to still have 8 inch lights at it, which is great to see. Hopefully these signals remain untouched for many more years to come, but, either way, I'm glad I was able to record this one when I did.

http://www.rxrsignals.com/Tennessee/R-Z ... aisy/Ward/