Hi, I'm William


Hi. I've been on this website for the past several months but never took the time to introduce myself!

My name is William. I am a 35 year old autistic railfan from Gary, Indiana, who lives in Tucson, Arizona, and a mediocre model railroader. I say "mediocre" because I play with my electric train sets on the floor like little kids do, I have no intention of putting my train on a table, and not only because it's a lot of work and expensive but because what if I have to move? And I want to not only keep my train sets but easily take them apart and transport them. Also I live in apartments not houses and I'm also low income and money can be quite tight in my household. I live with my mother.

I got my first electric train set when I was 9 years old, starting with the Bachmann HO Galaxy (Santa Fe F series locomotive with matching caboose and Middletown and New Jersey boxcar and Union Pacific open hopper.) A year later I got the Bachmann thunderbolt with a better locomotive in my opinion. Then when I was 12 my stepfather, who isn't into trains, bought me my first LifeLike train set (came with Union Pacific locomotive, auto carrier and six automobiles, signal bridge, railroad/road/street/highway signs and utility poles.) Then when I was 15 I bought a second LifeLike trainset with my own money for the first time. At that same time, unbeknownst to me, my stepfather bought me an N scale Amtrak passenger train from Bachmann and that was the only N scale train I ever had but it got lost in the mail. While I still mourn the loss of that train set, I like HO scale best anyway, N is too small and O is too large! HO is just right!

I like trains, especially passenger trains (intercity like Amtrak, commuter, light rail, streetcar, some bullet,) and even have my own HO Amtrak train set
Amtrak Train for Display 10.png


Superliner is my most favorite of all Amtrak cars and I like the Amtrak AMD103 P40 and P42 "Genesis" locomotives the most. I like the Superliners in Phase 4 but everything else in Phase 3.

Although I like trains, I'm much more interested in railroad crossings, but not just any crossings! I mostly like and prefer gated crossings, especially crossings that also have signals (lights or lights and bells.) I also like gate-less crossings with lights but prefer gated crossings over all else. I especially like the North American style crossings, especially the United States crossings but I also like the ones used in Canada, Australia, The Netherlands, and parts of Argentina, Columbia, and Brazil. I'm down with the crossings used in China, Japan, Korea, the United Kingdom, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Germany, which is where I lived twice with my stepfather being in the military and I've ridden trains in Germany, but I like the American crossing signals and gates the best!

I've been into railroad crossings ever since I was 4 years old, well I noticed them when I was younger but learned what they were when I was 4, one reason thanks to my Grandmother, a retired Amtrak employee having one of these in her house when I visited from Germany
Toy Railroad Crossing Light with Red-Green Lights.png
Why these have a green light is beyond me! The one in the picture is mine by the way! My late Uncle Carl, who worked for the EJ&E Railway up till his death in 2009 got me this on eBay in December 2003!

I especially like red and white striped crossing gates as I've always seen them, being born in 1985. I do like black and white and black and yellow crossing gates but red and white is my most favorite. I also like crossing gates with lights on them, especially the 4" lights, incandescent and especially LED, but like the 7" lights best on wishbone gates, which you don't see much anymore! I also like the Electro-Tech's LED gate lights used by Union Pacific Railroad. I also like the Alstom Aurora and National Electric Gate clear LEDs but not all that much, I prefer the 4" and ET LEDs and sometimes the Miller Ingenuity LED gate lights (mistaken for Western Cullen Hayes LEDs!, Miller Ingenuity manufactures them and sells them to WCH, which sells them out.)

Black and yellow gates did exist but I don't think they were very common. They were used on the Chicago South Shore and South Bend Railroad (now Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District South Shore Line)
800


I also like to take pictures of railroad crossing signals and draw pictures of them, and I like seeing them in person, in pictures, and on TV and in movies. I also like cartoon railroad crossings and wish some more cartoons featured them, and wish some more cartoon crossings looked more realistic, like putting lights on the gate arm in addition to the main signals. And of course, I like them on model railroads, especially the ones that actually light up, they're more fun to watch than those passive non-operating signals, or the signals that can operate but aren't hooked up!

I don't mind crossing gates without lights on them but I like it better when gates have lights mounted on them, because they look better that way and more American that way (until 2002, I've only seen American crossing gates and German crossing gates, which don't have lights on them except the old ones in East Germany, but I lived in West. I did see British crossing gates on TV but didn't get a very good look at them.) I don't know why but crossing gate lights are so important to me! And it especially makes me happy when I see crossing gate lights on foreign crossing gates, cartoon crossing gates, including animated, and model train crossing gates, and I mean actual lights not wannabe lights, although I'd have to settle for wannabe lights on cartoons and most cartoons don't do crossing gates with lights on them and not all cartoons have railroad crossings in them though some have trains!

I also wish more model railroaders did lighted crossing gates and wish I could see more of them but they're very hard to find even on Google Images. I've also decided to start putting lights on my own crossing gates and that's why I'm here. If I want gates with lights on them, the best thing to do is put them on my own gates and I'll be more likely to see them rather than relying on others to do them and I understand not everyone has that interest. But I'm pretty much like Kevin Rudko from Signalogic Systems https://signalogicsystems.com/. As a kid I imagined there'd be toy crossing gates with lights and thought that maybe there would be some, and there were but only in O scale. When I finally visited the model train store in Washington Union Station (now permanently closed) I hoped I'd find some but there weren't any much to my disappointment. Later I almost gave up hope of ever finding HO scale lighted crossing gates until 2002 when I first found Signalogic Systems and learned that Canada also does gated lights and signals similar to the US, only with different crossbucks. I found Mike's Railroad Crossing Website http://www.rxrsignals.com/ a few months later that year and that's when I learned about Australia's crossings, which are also similar to the US only from the left-hand side!

Like Rudko, I too want to put lights on my gates and I'm trying to learn what I can about that, including what types of lights to use and how to mount them and wire them. Thankfully I already know some of what I want to do but still have more to learn. And this is one of the crossing gates I'm planning to change, hopefully real soon
Busch Signals and NJI Crossing Gates April 9, 2021 5 (on LifeLike Crossing).png

I plan to remove the fake lights and replace them with SMD LEDs and wire them to the flasher unit my crossbucks are wired to (but the tip lights directly to the power source!)

I tend to write long messages so I better wrap this up. Thanks for reading and nice meeting you all! You can see me also on:

DeviantArt https://www.deviantart.com/willm3luvtrains/ (if you only want my train pictures, go to my Trains and Railroad Crossings folders)
Trains and Locomotives Wikia https://trains-and-locomotives.fandom.com/
See also my Cartoon Railroad Crossings Page https://peridot0.fandom.com/wiki/Railroad_Crossings_in_Cartoons/Animated_Shows_and_Movies (My work on this page is never done, I plan to add more and more to this over time!)
 
Hi William and welcome to the forum. You certainly have a wide range of railroading interests. That is one of the great aspects of this hobby. The breadth of the skills and knowledge you can learn and develop. There is an enormous pool of talent on this forum and you are now part of it. Glenn
 
Hi William! Welcome to the forum!
Nothing wrong with running trains on the floor, if you're knees can take it. It's you're railroad, after all.
I find it curious that you enjoy rail crossings so much; but, like I said, it's you're railroad.
In case you are interested, here's a photo of one of the rail-crossings in the Canadian town where I live:
CN 2552_C44-9W_09-09-2020 (2).jpg

Keep posting and letting us know how things are going in the hobby!
 
Thanks everybody! I'm glad to be here and hope I like it here!

As to why I like railroad crossings, I can think of at least two reasons. One, I guess it's because of my autism. Another reason could be where I come from originally, Gary, Indiana (a not-so-well spoken of place!,) there are lots of railroad crossings! Some of the streets there, at least the north-south streets have more than one crossing, some more than two! It's also possible railroad crossings were the first things I noticed about the railroad (didn't think of that one till just now!)

First moving to Germany at only 2 years old and staying till I was 4, I noticed the crossings were very different than the US ones, different crossbucks, different signals, and different gates. And in Germany some crossings didn't have lights and yet had gates! I didn't know it then but those were manually operated crossings, something Germany still had while the US pretty much abandoned that, using all-automatic gates with lighted signals. I did see some lighted signals, some with gates, in Germany, especially when I moved back when I was 7.

One thing you might not have known about the manual German crossings, the ones with gates but no signals, the gates went down three minutes before the train arrived! At automatic/signalised crossings the trains came more immediately after the gates came down! And at manual crossings the gates blocked the entire road, some coming down from the left though they drive on the right. At some crossings the gates remained down even after a train passed until a car came!

For a fuller explanation as to why I might like railroad crossings, see https://www.deviantart.com/willm3luvtrains/art/Why-Do-I-Like-Railroad-Crossings-834491914

In case anyone's interested, the crossing in your picture @McLeod has two cantilever/gantry signals, possibly from Safetran and possibly built in the 1970s, and have gates mounted in front of them (I like gates after cantilevers better) with crossbuck, front-facing lights and bell on gate mast. The signal lights are 12"×20" (12" lights with 20" backgrounds, and 12"x20" is my most favorite light size) and possibly LED by the brightness and look to me like General Electric or Harmon uniform-look LEDs, which fade in and fade out. The bell is a Safetran, Invensys Rail, or Siemens electronic bell. The gate is a single-arm fiberglass or aluminum-fiberglass gate with vertical red and white stripes, which makes more sense to use than slanted stripes, and the gate lights look like they're R.E.C.O 4" lights but I don't know if they're incandescent or LED (if they fade, they're incandescent; if they don't, they're LED.)
And judging by the look of the installation, it's possible the gates were added later than the cantilevers (if I'm not mistaken, when adding gates to cantilever crossings but keeping the cantilevers in place, they add a short mast signal, where the gate will go, in front of the cantilevers and put or transfer the crossbuck and front-flashers there! Otherwise, usually gates are mounted behind the cantilevers, which I like better!)

Admittedly I'm not versed in a lot of things, even things I should be, but I am very versed in railroad crossings! Got much of my knowledge from www.rxrsignals.com Mind you I still don't know everything about crossings!
 



Back
Top