The "Wobbly Gate Dance," Iowa, 1996

[AndyWS]

Not my footage, although I wish it was (I was 10 at the time). Happens around the one-minute mark:



Pretty standard '80s/early '90s C&NW mainline 12" x 24" incandescent Safetran install, although by then it had been UP for a little over a year. If there were signals at the crossing before these, they would have likely been either WRRS wigwags, Griswold "EM" gated signals, or WRRS "Model 10" gated signals.

This seems likely to be 600th Ave. between Ames and Nevada, which retains a similar setup today except with UP's stupid (IMO, and especially in a rural area with no sidewalks, and as far as I can tell they're the only railroad that does this) low-mounted E-bells.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/DwYjbiX858QPhBMfA

[SirKrunch]

Yeah, just East of the elevator. Growing up, that specific crossing never had signals before the 80's. It was just crossbucks and stop signs. Meanwhile the crossing to the West had gates that were manually operated after Ames yard was moved out to the sticks. By the end of the 70's though, there wasn't much action in the yard anymore. The gates and lights were stripped, and this crossing went passive with warning signs saying to cross at your own risk. It wasn't until the early to mid 80's when CNW made their push in that area... putting gates up at both crossings and (unfortunately) replacing all the wig wags in Nevada, Colo, and State Center. Sad to see those CNW installed gated signals all being replaced now as well within the last 5-10 years. :(
My parents lived in Nevada at the time, and I wish I'd had the smarts to take my 110 camera and get a few pics of the wags. We'd cross often walking out to the park just North of downtown. That, and the Rock Island had a couple couple cool old gates on the South side of town as well, before CNW took over the trackage and did some signal upgrades.

[AndyWS]

Yeah, just East of the elevator. Growing up, that specific crossing never had signals before the 80's. It was just crossbucks and stop signs. Meanwhile the crossing to the West had gates that were manually operated after Ames yard was moved out to the sticks. By the end of the 70's though, there wasn't much action in the yard anymore. The gates and lights were stripped, and this crossing went passive with warning signs saying to cross at your own risk. It wasn't until the early to mid 80's when CNW made their push in that area... putting gates up at both crossings and (unfortunately) replacing all the wig wags in Nevada, Colo, and State Center. Sad to see those CNW installed gated signals all being replaced now as well within the last 5-10 years. :(
My parents lived in Nevada at the time, and I wish I'd had the smarts to take my 110 camera and get a few pics of the wags. We'd cross often walking out to the park just North of downtown. That, and the Rock Island had a couple couple cool old gates on the South side of town as well, before CNW took over the trackage and did some signal upgrades.

Nice! Had hoped you would chime in, although I didn't realize you had such close ties to that specific location!

Yeah, there's a lot of stuff I wish I had paid more attention to/documented as a kid/teenager. At least I was able to get my absolute childhood crossing on the site still set up just as it was dating back to my earliest memories of trains and signals, before they were finally replaced in 2012 (I really should take and submit some updated pictures, huh? In fact I think the modernized signal setup has already been changed around some since then). The house I grew up in is about 2,000 feet from that crossing, and the majority of our family errands took us through it so I saw a LOT of it growing up (not to mention hearing the horns for it all the time until it was finally made a quiet zone sometime around the year 2000). It was C&NW until the merger, then UP for about a year, then Wisconsin and Southern ever since (although in the first few years they used a lot of unrepainted ex-C&NW power, mostly chop-nosed GP9s and SD18Rs).

[freebrickproductions]

I assume those wobbling gates were the gate mechs "pumping" after raising, most likely due to the hold-clears in the mechanisms failing to engage properly when raised.

[AndyWS]

I assume those wobbling gates were the gate mechs "pumping" after raising, most likely due to the hold-clears in the mechanisms failing to engage properly when raised.

Looks that way. Although I don't think I've ever seen it happen to both signals at a crossing at the same time like that. Almost looked like they were "bowing" to each other at first. The one across the tracks had real trouble catching.

[AndyWS]

Ironically just ran across a more recent video of the same thing happening in the same state (at the end):



Looks like it's fixing to shake the light visors off!