1st Street Railroad Crossing #1, Cordele, GA

originally recorded on 6-24-21

Signal on the left: 2 pairs of WCH 12x24 inch lights with WCH 2nd Generation LEDs, an NEG electronic bell, a Siemens gate mechanism, and RECO LED gate lights.
Signal on the right: 2 pairs of WCH 12x24 inch lights with WCH 2nd Generation LEDs, a Safetran mechanical bell, a Safetran gate mechanism, NEG LED gate lights, and a RECO LED gate light.

After catching the second northbound mixed freight, we went back over to this crossing to get it documented, only to find-out that CSX had yet another northbound lined through here. I figured that the next train must've been about another 50 minutes behind the one we'd just caught, as that'd been about 50 minutes behind the one before it too, and it seemed the dispatcher had a wave of northbounds they were sending through Cordele. Sure enough, about 50 minutes about the previous train, this northbound intermodal train came through with an ES44AH on the head-end and another ES44AH working as the mid-train DPU. After this, nothing else appeared to be lined through Cordele on the Fitzgerald Sub, and we called it a day and headed back to our hotel room in Vidalia after a very long, but very successful, day of railfanning.

This crossing's another nice one, featuring a nice late 1970s SCL install. Originally, this crossing had all Safetran equipment, including all Safetran 8 inch lights and a pair of Safetran mechanical bells, which it retained up through at least 2013. In about 2014/2015, CSX upgraded all of the crossings along this line to LED, and these signals were no exception. Their original Safetran 8 inch lights got replaced with LED WCH 12x24 inch lights, alongside the rest of the 8 inch lights along the line (with a possible exception for one crossing up near Oglethorpe). Then, sometime after that, the Safetran mechanical bell on the far signal must've died and was replaced with the NEG e-bell here (no idea when exactly this happened, but sometime within the past few years for sure). It appears that the most recent change to this crossing was to the far signal as well, when its original Safetran gate mech was replaced with a modern Siemens one.
Thankfully, the closer signal is still largely original, and even still has its original Safetran mechanical bell! The Safetran bell here also still sounds quite nice & healthy, so hopefully it hangs on here for a good while longer. Either way though, this was a great crossing to end the day off on, and I'm glad I was able to get it recorded.