Mike's Railroad Crossing Forum

*originally recorded on 3-14-25*

Signal on the left: 2 pairs of Safetran 12x20 inch lights with GE Uniform Look LEDs, a Siemens S-80 gate mechanism, and RECO LED gate lights.
Signal on the far right: 4 pairs of Safetran 12x20 inch lights with GE Uniform Look LEDs, a General Signals Type 3 electronic bell, a Siemens S-80 gate mechanism, RECO LED gate lights, and an NEG LED gate light.
Signal on the near right: 1 pair of Safetran 12x20 inch lights with GE Uniform Look LEDs.

On March 14th, I got up at 3 AM and was on the road by 4, to try and get down to the NS East End District/Atlanta Terminal District around Douglasville, GA, by sunrise. Thankfully, I was successful in doing so, however nothing was in the area. After about a couple hours or so of waiting, I was finally able to get my first train of the day: Amtrak 19 flying through Douglasville with an ALC-42 leading a P42DC for power and a friendly crew aboard.
You can also hear the Douglasville DD reading-out a bit after the crossing deactivates.

This crossing is a rather neat one, featuring the first S-80 gate mechs I've seen in person! These are currently the closest S-80s to me, at just about 3 hours away, and are absolutely why I made the trek down to this part of the East End/Atlanta Terminal. These gate mechs are somewhat unique, rather than using a camshaft attached to the mechanism and relays to control the gate arm positioning, these gate mechs are fully computerized aside from the motor and the mechanism its attached to. Due to the solid-state nature of the design, these gate mechs are much smaller than other S-series gate mechs made by Safetran (and later Invensys Rail and Siemens), such as the much more common S-40 and S-60. They were only first created by Siemens sometime in/around March of 2022, so they still aren't too common, though CN seems to have taken a liking to them as they've installed a good few across Canada, along with one of the first pairs of them here in the US on the former IC main in Illinois. UP and NS have also installed a few across their system as well. They've even managed to crop-up in Indonesia already as well, it'll be interesting to see if any other countries decide to adopt these that have already been using some Siemens gate mechs (like the UK). Amusingly, some have even already been replaced, as the South Shore up in Indiana originally had some installed on their new pedestrian crossings, but they were replaced with WCH gate mechs prior to the double-track project on that line being completed.
The signals here were originally installed by NS back in the late-90s, it appears, though sometime between 2008 and 2012 the GS e-bell here was replaced with a Safetran Type 3 e-bell. In 2015/2016, NS upgraded this crossing to LED, though the signals then remained unchanged for several more years. Finally, in 2024, the gated signals here were replaced with the current ones with the S-80 gate mechs, marking the first known S-80 install here in the southeastern US. This upgrade wasn't even originally known about until earlier this year, when a signal maintainer friend of mine from Ohio found a photo showing this crossing on Siemens's website and was curious as to where it was. After a bit of searching on Google Maps, CWHobbychannel was able to find-out the photo was taken of this crossing, so I eventually started to make plans to get out here. As a result, I was finally able to visit some S-80s in person for the first time, which was great to see. I'm glad to see the extra gateless signal here was retained in the upgrade as well, I think auxiliary signals like this are always nice to see.

http://www.rxrsignals.com/Georgia/A-F/D ... e/Private/