I have some old (perhaps 20 years) non-operating HO crossing signals. They were very cheap, and may have been from Life Like. They have gates, but no working lights. They were originally painted very cheaply, but I think they look great painted properly. Also, they seem to be the only ones I have found which seem to me to be the correct scale (to my untrained eye). Other HO crossing gates and crossing signals seem too big. I can’t find these anymore.
Anyone know where I can get some really good and properly to-scale non-working crossing lights?
I’m not sure how ‘big’ is big to you, as the crossbucks, lights, and ‘poles’ seem to be in proper scale (in HO), according to my measurements here in prairie Canada. I’m referring to the ones made by IHC. I loved them!
Here’s a link to all the HO scale crossbucks in the Walthers catalog; I’m not sure you’ll find anything with lights that looks good and is cheap. At least you could skip buying the controller circuitry…
If those are the ones I think they are, you can very easily pop out the lenses and install 3mm red LEDs. A bit of magnet wire down the back of the pole and you can hook them to a 555 timer and make them flash. MUCH cheaper than the commercial version. I converted all of my 20 year old ones. Not quite as nice as the $35 ones but pretty close.
Surprisingly enough, these from Life Like “Scene Master” are VERY close to scale …
The lenses easily pop out for installing SMT LEDs if you desire. I’ve measured them in comparison to a real one, and they are almost dead-on in all respects !!!
I cut the box off the bottom because it just did not look like anything I had ever seen. With it cut off, I agree that the signals look good and scale out very closely. They will serve as a nice stand-in until I can find time to replace them with the Busch and Walthers signals that are sitting on a shelf.
