Holy. Crap. That is really cool. I don't have any questions at this point but I am really glad you are sharing this!!

Very cool! Last year I acquired this for my gameroom setup and wired up a light for it. Looking to buy a RR crossing sign and a Stoplight too...I love industrial stuff.

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As a locomotive engineer I have a lot of respect for the maintainers. Every crossing that has working gates means less riff raff that I need to worry about. 11 years strong without hitting a vehicle or person and all my near misses have been at crossings without gates. Keep up the good work.

Yes traffic signals do look cool in restaurants and game rooms lol.

That's really cool, Coyote. Very interesting stuff!

Here are a few questions for ya:

What were you first: an engineer or an electrician? How did the one lead to the other? Or did it?

Do you do the signal maintenance for the small railroad company or for the local county or state?

How far back on the tracks are those sensors placed? Are they placed at that spot based on average speed of the train for that area? Or what other factors?

What kind of engine do you drive? In other words, when you say it's a small excursion railroad, is it a place like this: Roaring Camp Railroad ?

Any railroad-related pet peeves?

How is the railroad industry holding up? I know the industry got a boost due to the oil trains as the US is producing more domestic petroleum, but I'd love to know whether you think the industry is on the upswing or downswing. I've always thought that the US would benefit from more rail investment.

Are pinball machines ever moved by rail? Dunno what is moved by intermodal transportation these days... but I always thought it was crazy that so much goes by truck when we have passenger and freight trains crisscrossing the USA every day.

Cool side job, Coyote! I follow the railroad industry as well and like to watch for trains when we take road trips. On one of my workbenches is a couple of winter projects, a crossing signal bell and a Wabco signal unit from a us&s searchlight. Basically trying to get the bell to work right again and then to figure out the electrical terminals to switch between the 3 light colors on the other! Not a lot of schematics for some of these things yet on the web.... I plan to pour a couple of concrete pads in the backyard this summer and set up a couple of the crossing signals and train aspect lights that I have. If nothing else, they should make great lightning attractors at 15'+ tall!

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Think I am going to buy this today

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Sweet job. Always wanted to be an engineer and still do.

Alright I bought it...had to fix the green light...resolder broken wire at ground connection. Here is what is on the back of the signal. Need to get a sequencer.

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Why would anyone ever want to own a Rock n' Bowl at home... LOL

Yeah I just put in these cheap LED bulbs I picked up at the dollar store so they would all be the same. The guy I bought it from had three different bulbs in it. Hey great Craigslist find and since we were just talking about wanting a signal yesterday with you it came at the right time this morning!

Now all I need is to pick up some HUO Pinball's off of Craigslist. Hope this wish works as well. I will report back tomorrow

Will a penny on the track derail a train? We used to tell each other that when we were kids.

Not at all.

But it does make a great souvenir for kids!

Heck I put like 50 coins in a row on the track when I was a kid, no accident...

Awesome! I was just at Berea Station today watching for awhile. Where I often have breakfast is right next to the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad. The maintenance depot for that railroad is 5 min from my parents house. I love watching the Century 424 start in cold weather. Good stuff! Somebody on Pinside is a member of NARCOA though I can't recall who.

Are there still hobos? What did they used to call the guys in charge at the train stops? Yard bosses? I always thought that was a mean sounding name.

Very cool. My buddy is the electrical foreman on a light rail that's being installed here in Kitchener. He's in charge of installing track switches, crossing lights and arms.

He's been explaining to me how it all goes together and is built. They had some experts from Germany come in to show how the hydraulic rail switches are installed and maintained.

Bums are a little more common than you think. They do a pretty decent job at staying out of sight. When I was a conductor I spotted a few or I could hear them when I had to walk my train. I've also spotted quite a few on passing trains. They're always young people, never the old people that you see in movies.

About a month ago I got called to get a train out in the middle of nowhere. I get there and there's a mid train distributed power engine that needed to be daily inspected. It's a cold night and I walk back to the engine. When I'm walking back I notice that the engines cab light is on, no big deal. Just by chance the engine is facing the opposite direction so I climbed up the back of it, look into the window on the engineers door and there's a young woman looking back at me. I told her I'm not the cops, that I'm not going to tell anyone she's back there, but that I do need to go inside the cab. She says ok, so I opened the door and asked her if anyone else is with her. She says no so I asked her to open the toilet door and the other cab door so I can be sure, she does that and everything is good. Now, she's a scrawny young woman, probably around 20, hasn't showered in days or weeks, clothes are filthy, isn't wearing a winter jacket, and is only carrying a backpack which is about half full. She starts begging me to please not tell anyone, she's trying to get back to California but has no money and this is the only way. I told her that this train is only going to a yard in Chicago and that she should get off before going into that yard because none of the trains in that yard go to California. I told her that her best bet would be to find a westbound container train and that should at least get her to the west coast. We talked for a while (I was in no hurry) and she tells me her whole story and why she's riding trains and why she's all alone. She was pretty down on her luck so I gave her my stocking hat, my insulated gloves, some money, and wished her luck.

I'm sure the number of bums has dropped since then, but I actually think that rail police turn their head to them the same as the crews do. There's no way they can miss them.

That I don't know. We just started running DP within the past couple of years and mid-train is pretty rare. To me, DP trains run the same whether the engine is mid-train or at the rear, so may as well put it at the rear.

I took a trip to Boston from Chicago by train a couple of springs ago. It was not enjoyable and won't do it again and try to steer people away from it. It was over five hours late. Multiple times we completely stopped.

It wasn't cheap enough compared to air travel either.

I hear stories about Japan's trains and wonder if ours were like that if they would be more popular.

I have a cabinet, and use this to test various setups that are possible, PLUS, when needed, to test railroad preemption settings (you know, to make sure a red light doesn't get someone stuck on the tracks when a train is coming..!)
Anyways, I'll be kinda surprised if that many folks care, but, hey. It's a slow night, figured I'd share.
Any questions about this stuff, ask away.

We should build a super bulletproof EM pinball machine using train signal relays and switches...the score motor should have a glass cover that you remove with a thumbscrew, like your semaphore motor.
I would love to see an EM gun game or a pinball machine running that kind of technology. It would probably have to have a separate relay cabinet on wheels to fit everything, but I would be fine with that...

One of these days, we'll get to play pinball with Coyote, but it's been fun finding out he's a railroad worker and rail fan!
We're ready to take a road trip again just about any time...
Denny

Passenger rail is a mixed bag in the USA, and that's coming from me, a fanatic of passenger rail. The long haul routes are often late because they are scheduling around freight traffic. It's slower, and more expensive in some cases, than air travel.

The Northeast Corridor, on the other hand, is almost all Amtrak-owned and is fast and punctual. The Regional trains do 110-120 mph through Massachusetts and Rhode Island. If I have to go anywhere up and down between DC and Boston I'll take the train, you miss so much traffic and its cost-effective.

I don't think the incoming political scene is going to be kind to Amtrak. I am hopeful, though. If we want trains like Japan it will be very expensive. Japan's population is a lot less spread out, the distances between major metros is just so much smaller. The USA would have to be serious about running new rail, which is hard to do when NIMBYism is so rampant. If we are going to see more high speed rail its going to come through individual states mandates, like California. Florida would also benefit heavily, as would Texas, for intercity high speed connections. Fingers crossed.

Just as an amendment to my previous post, this overlay of Japan over the Northeast shows you why Japan has better trains than we do. Much smaller land area.

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Well we differ in the way to achieve better train travel. If people don't want to travel that way you can't make them. I think the problem lies with the customer service. It's like a lot of service industries in the U.S. Not a lot of quality workers willing to care about the job they do.

I remember talking to a guy that owned a big construction business in Vincennes. He said he had trouble finding good workers which I found surprising because that's a college town. He said it's very hard to find people that come on time and want to stick with the job longer than it takes to train them.

Sorry. This seems to have edged into politics but I just don't think you can govern people to take the train. It seems most towns are happy to get rid of their tracks for walking trails.

The real difference is that Japan, as a country and a culture, has an extremely high attention to detail and an underlying perfectionism that is a strong thread amongst a large swath of its workforce. By their very nature, they're going to build something to a level of quality that most other principalities, states, or countries could only dream of doing. California's answer to a high speed rail system on par with Japan's(which is what they're looking to do) is to throw more and more money at it. They've already scrapped the SF-LA line as there are too many people in the central valley to ignore and with the rising costs(aka underbidding the amount on purpose to get the bonds to pass the popular vote) they need that ridership to help pay for the rest of the lines. Current ticket estimates are $85 one way from Bakersfield to LA. They scrapped the Bakersfield to LA line as it was going to cost WAY too much money to tunnel through all those mountains in the Grapevine. Then, they just keep adding stops under the reasoning that they want the workers for SF and LA to live in the valley and commute to the big cities. Last I heard, they were up to six stops within about a 200 mile stretch. There's no way anybody's getting anywhere fast on that train.

I have no problem with California getting a high speed rail system. I really don't. I just don't think it's wise to do when the state government is already in a MASSIVE debt crisis. We are so far in the red, it's unreal. Now is not the time to build the HSR. Let's get into the black for a few solid years, fix a ton of highways, bridges, and roads, THEN start looking into HSR. Besides, HSR doesn't really make sense in California due to how large even just our big cities are. San Francisco you can get around in somewhat decently without a car, but you'd need to have a HSR stop somewhere near the heart of the touristy areas, and that'll never happen. LA? Forget about it! Even if you were in the entertainment industry and needed to go from studio to studio, you'll absolutely need a car.

Don't think for a minute, too, that if the SF-LA line ever gets built that the airline companies won't lower their prices to compete with the train. They'll do it in a heartbeat to get their ridership up. Then the train will be stuck as they don't have the luxury to lower their prices as quickly and fluidly as the privately owned airlines.

I just don't see evidence that the problem with Amtrak is customer service. The problem with Amtrak is the trains don't go where people want them to go as fast as they want them to go and at the right price. We have an amazing regional air transport network in the USA. Example:

I want to go to both PAPA and Pinburgh this year. I live in Rhode Island. The Amtrak station is 2 miles from my house, an easy trip. However the details: In order to do that, I would have to catch the once a day Pennsylvanian after taking the Northeast Regional. The entire trip takes 14 hours. If the Regional train is > 45 minutes late I miss the Pittsburgh train. The train costs $116 one way. My first train is 6:50 AM and I don't get in until 9 or 10 at night.

If I take a plane there's no direct flights from TF green just outside providence. It's $260 roundtrip but only 3.5 hours. If I take the train 1 hour north to Boston, flights are direct @ 1h50m so < 3 hrs with $260 ticket + $12 train ticket and $3 subway fare. It's a no brainer to take a plane unless I want to spend the entire day on a train. Plus flights run more often and the chances of a delay making me 'stuck' in Philadelphia are close to zero, unlike the train.

I think high speed rail linking major cities would be huge for the United States. Especially since cities like Boston are increasingly unaffordable. Imagine what it would do to Portland, ME if the 2 hour downeaster went to Boston in 1 hr or less? Changes the entire dynamic of where you can work and live. I know, I moved out of Boston to Providence and still work out of an office in Cambridge. If I had to commute every day the Amtrak trains get to Boston in 38 minutes.

Very cool Coyote!

One of my best friends was a track signal repair man for the CN&W (Chicago North Western Railroad) before they were gobbled up by Union Pacific. He even stayed on after the merger for a couple of years. While he loved it and the pay was good; I think the fact he basically lived out of a motel (their area was pretty big) for months on end... burned him out.

He gave some of his tools and his hard hat w/ the U.P. symbol.

Sorry, customer service wasn't the correct term I guess but work ethic and punctuality.
Honestly the trip I made wouldn't have been half bad if we were closer to on time. It was supposed to be 21 hours but it was more like 27.

I've got a question, Coyote;

How exactly does a railroad crossing know that a train is coming, and to then flip on (or off) the lights/bells and lower the "arms?" Is there a sensor on the track, or does the conductor press a button in the cabin that turns it all on? I've ALWAYS wondered, because I feel like there's a lot of variables, as in the length of the train, its speed, and weather (like needing more warning times for fog and rain).

Max

Don't apologize! I really appreciate the time you took to respond. I'm actually blown away at the eloquence of the technology used. It doesn't seem outrageously abstract, but it's way more advanced than I thought it would be. FWIW, I used to be obsessed with trains when I was younger. I'm still fascinated by them, and I wish we relied on them more. When I briefly lived in Montana, you'd see freight trains that would stretch on for what seemed like miles. Once, we got stuck at a crossing for nearly 15 minutes waiting for a train that was carrying airplane fuselages:

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Is there a national speed limit for different areas like towns or just state limits?

The tech involved with the train sensors for crossing signals these days is great and all, but what I'm really curious about is: How did they do it 50 years ago? Or 75 years ago? Or even 100 years ago?

I love the different ways things were made in the past, but are done differently today, only to have largely the same end user experience. Sure, advancements in technology have made things easier and cheaper to build and replace with newer, smaller stuff, but the end result really isn't vastly different than before.

Perfect example: Pinball machines!

The only real changes to the basic gameplay over the last 50 or so years are ramps and multi-level playfields. We still have drop targets, still have pop bumpers, still have two main flippers in the middle, still have the plunger on the right, still have the drain in the middle, etc. With the exception of the DMD/LCD screens and graphics the UI and UX for pinball has barely changed, if at all, in many decades. But what fascinates me is how EM's accomplish all the scoring and tracking of objectives(especially for the ones that have backbox animations/achievements). Solid states are easy enough to understand, with how they can be programmed and all, but EM's had to process that all out in a MUCH different fashion.

Cool thread. I'm a bit late to the game, but his is why I think that Pinside is so awesome. We come from all over and have such diverse hobbies and interests, including pinball! Anyhow, I was hoping someone could let me know a little more about this CNR lantern we've had forever. It appears to be manufactured by Hiram L. Piper of Montreal and is oil with glass lenses. (one red, three blue/green) My parents got it +40 years ago when they lived up in Canada-either in Halifax or Ontario (I'll have to ask) and it's currently in my possession. Yeah, it's old tech, but you guys seem to know your stuff and I wonder what stories this lantern could tell. What was it's purpose/function, any information or places to start researching would be appreciated. Thanks!

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Bump... Just found this thread. Great read! I too am a hobbyist locomotive engineer at the Wanamaker, Kempton & Southern in Pennsylvania. I've been hanging out at this railroad all my life and have been a volunteer for nearly 30 years. I've spent about 15 years collecting an online archive about the railroad...

http://www.jeff-z.com/wks/wks.html

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