Mike's Railroad Crossing Forum

*originally recorded on 3-25-26*

Signal on the left: 2 pairs of Safetran 8 inch lights with Safetran Fading LEDs, a Safetran Type 3 electronic bell, a Safetran gate mechanism, and RECO LED gate lights.
Signal on the right: 2 pairs of Safetran 8 inch lights with Safetran Fading LEDs, a Safetran gate mechanism, RECO LED gate lights, and an NEG LED gate light.

On March 25th, I went over to Covington, TN, to catch their weekly siren test. After attempting a siren on the south side of the town, I went across the town to see if I could catch anything on the CN Fulton Subdivision before I needed to head down to Memphis for their weekly siren test. As I was heading up to this crossing, I heard a nearby defect detector reading-out, but I couldn't tell if it was for a northbound or southbound, so, when I got here, I went ahead and quickly set-up my camera and started recording. And I'm definitely glad I did, as, not too long after I got set-up, the crossing activated and I was able to catch my first train of the day: a southbound CN grain train with an SD70M-2 leading an SD75I for power!

This crossing is a pretty nice one, featuring a 1980s IC install at it that's still fairly original. Sometime in the late-2000s/early-2010s, it appears, CN upgraded this crossing to LED, but thankfully kept the original 8 inch heads. Then, sometime between 2012 and when EthantheRailfanner first visited here in 2020, CN replaced the bell here with the current Safetran Type 3 e-bell. Thankfully, since then, nothing else has changed to these 8 inch IC signals, which is pretty nice to see. I must say, the backgrounds on the lights here definitely all look pretty nicely faded as well. Hopefully these old signals remain here for many more years to come, but, either way, I'm quite glad I got to record it when I did.
Also, I have no idea why this crossing remained active for so long after the train passed either. Seems like it wasn't the only crossing along this line doing this either on this day, as I later saw another one here in Covington have the same issue.

https://www.rxrsignals.com/Tennessee/A- ... on/Rialto/