I’m curious what kind of experience people have had with the crossing signals I mentioned in the title and if there are others you would recommend? I’m looking for the most prototypical; ones that flash and can be activated by an IR sensor. Please feel free to add what kind of IR sensor you placed and how it works.
Thanks,
Burt
Burt,
I have a half dozen of the Tomar Crossing Signals (without gates) on my layout, separated into two different blocks. I use NCE block detection equipment (two BD20’s) to activate the signals.
I love them, they are very prototypical and quite reliably turn on and off when they are supposed to.
You can add a bell sound, but I had no interest in that, just the flashing lights.
I chose not to add working gates because of the added expense. In the little town on my layout, the citizens know better than to cross the tracks when the lights are flashing.
Rich
I have a couple of the Tomar Crossing signals and a few block signals and love them. They’re made of brass and are very detailed
Hi Burt, Here’s my experience -
I have a number of the Tomar 862 paired signals. In my opinion, they are top-of-the-line. They have four LED’s each, two in each direction. I’m not that familiar with the other brands, but I know of at least two that only have the two LED’s, facing one direction only.
With our club modular shows, I use a pair of them at a road crossing, one is only about 6 inches from the front edge of the module. They look and work very well. But a certain person leaned over the front edge of the module to work on another detail, and the stomach of said person was enough to break the top of the near 862 off, right at the point where the wires join the mast, below the LED’s. (Guess who ‘said person’ was?)
This is a clue as to how they are assembled, and I am very careful now, at my clumsy old age of 67, not to repeat this move, as these signals are not cheap. I was able to temporarily ‘glue’ the signal back together good enuf for the rest of the weekend, and switched it to the ‘rear’ position; one of the LED wire connections was damaged beyond repair, and I faced it to the rear. Lesson: the support mast does not continue in one piece through the LED housings, and the wires are in fact part of the support. (I have thought many times about being a professional Beta-tester…, as I seem to be a living,walking Murphy’s Law illustration…)
I still think these are the best on the market, I just need to be a bit more careful.
For this crossing, I also used a bell sound, which works very well with a speaker just under the module, hidden by the skirting, for shows.
The detection and driver system I used is a combination of the Logic Rail GCP (Grade Crossing Pro) with the Cd cell/optical detectors, and the ITT grade crossing sound module (bell). (see www.logicrailtech.com and www.ittproducts.com.) This system works very well - the module has three (3) mainline tracks, each with its own GCP, and there is only one ITT sound module. The system is flexible eno
As long as my previous post was, I have a couple more comments.
The LogicRail GCP also has an output to drive a motor (Tortoise, for example) which will raise and lower crossing gates, if that is desired.
Also, the flashing sequence of lights at a prototype crossing is not what I would have anticipated. This will affect the wiring of the crossing.
I asked online in the Yahoo ‘Railway-Signaling’ group for information on the correct sequence. Here is what I was told, with no dissenting opinons:
" The way I have seen RR wiring diagrams is that all lights flash left then right then left, right etc on all poles. On each pole, the right side front and back are wired parallel, same for left set of lights. The other pole is wired so that it is synchronized with the other as far as left-right flash sequence.
If you could have a bird eye looking down view of crossing at the north and south poles, you would see four lamps on the left (2 on north, 2 on south) light, extinguish, then right side light, extinguish, the left side light etc."
…and another posted a video, which I cannot see since I cannot do youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5fEOMFWYPE
So if you look at the crossing, you see the front signal left light flash when the ‘back’ of the rear signal left flashes. In other words, looking at the signals, you see both left, then both right.
This definitely affects the way you wire the lights, but most folks might choose to ignore this information, or to wire it according to their own preference.
Dick
I too, chose the Tomar crossing signals for front of the layout crossings, and have been pleased with their appearance and reliability. The wiring instructions are straight forward enough ( that even for a person that electrical things do not always come naturally to–finger pointing to self–) that most folk should be able to make the correct connections.