I just acquired a 4 light Safetran crossing light and Cullen bell. No idea what Im doing and looking for help powering these and getting them working. I realize this is model train forum but suspect you good people love all things railroad! And having trouble finding any other forums out there for this topic. Any leads or point me in the right direction would be appreciated!
My first task is to power them (12v ?) just to see if they work. No idea where to start.
Respectfully
Todd
Cincinnati
Lots of stuff on Youtube, and they usually work on 12v… did you open it up and see if stuff still moves inside, and usually there is a circuit diagram on the door/cover
Thanks for the reply! I saw all the YouTube videos but they are all just showing off there toys not explanatory on how they did it. Surprisingly little info, esp. for the 4 way railroad crossing lights.
I saw the 12 v on one of the videos. Cameta just quickly panned past a car battery charger they were using.
All the parts in the bell are easy and move perfectly. There is also a diagram, I just don’t know how to read one well enough to be sure. Maybe I will post that. There are three posts and don’t want to choose the wrong one. Screwed up another antique guessing now gun shy [:D]
Yeah, post a good picture of the diagram and a close up of the terminals.
Is there a model number? or other identifing marks? Do a Google search for wiring diagrams for that make model.
Thanks for the treplies and leads. Very appreciated. as requested here are some pics of the diagram and posts for this Model 333:
DIAGRAM: I dont really know how to read an electric diagram without guessing ;^)
POSTS:
Attached here are the railroad crossing sign with posts:
The Bell…
The schematic shows that you need only two wires from your power source to the device. The “+” at the top of the variable resistor is the left most terminal of the three binding posts on the lower left of the device (per the photos). The “-” connection at the bottom of the schematic is the middle binding post of the three. (The third post is just a terminal to connect wires from the two coils together, you make no connection to it.)
I am assuming the blue wire and the loose black wire in the photo are from the outside of the unit and are probably the wires that brought power into the unit. Assuming that is true, then the black wire should be connected to the left most binding post and power would be connected to them outside the unit. (I have no idea what the yellow, red or orange wires are for.)
Assuming you use a 12V battery (or a car battery charger) to power it, connect the “+” battery terminal (red on a car battery) to the black wire (connected to the left most binding post) and the “-” battery terminal (black on a car battery) to the blue wire (connected to the middle binding post) and the bell should start ringing.
To adjust the rate of the bell ringing, lightly loosen the screw on the band wrapped around middle of the variable resistor (that brown ceramic tubular component at the extreme left of the device just above the left binding post)… probably want to do this with the battery disconnected and the bell not ringing… save your ears and lessen the possibility of a short circuit while you are poking around with a screwdriver. “I THINK” that moving the b
Semper Vaporo Im tearing up a little. I’ve been trying to get this [seemingly} simple information on many train enthusiast forums for 4 weeks now. This is exactly the kind of detailed and educational info I needed being totally new to this. VERY helpful and appreciated. I will test it out - warning the family first! - and report back. I assume its a similar 12v approach on the railroad crossing sign but many more posts and someone mentioned in passing that they thought everything had to wired on the ground side (?) which left me dead in the water ;^).
There is an oil hole for lubrication (top left 32 in the digram). Any idea what type of oil one would use?
The paper inside the device says to use AAR SM-07 to oil it… don’t that just tell you everything you need to know??? At least you can be fairly certain to not use peanut butter or mayonaise, but I guess it could be possible that SM-07 means one of those.
Seriously, I don’t know. I would look at where the oil goes once introduced into the hole. Does it look like a grease? Or is it totally dry? I would guess that a light machine oil (sewing machine oil, 3-in-1 SAE 10, or maybe 3-in-1 SAE 20) would work… Sort of depends on what happens to the oil… does it just drip onto stuff or is there a container that gets filled and it keeps a wick wet or dribbles into a bearing? Probably don’t want to just dump lots of oil all over the place, but I can see where it would be good to put a drop or two on pivot points. I don’t see the location in any of the photos but the diagram sort of indicates to me that you would just put a couple of drops of “oil” in the hole and call it good for a year or three. I doubt if you will be ringing it as often as it did when it was installed at a grade crossing and I doubt if the RR oiled it very often… probably only if the system had broken and somebody thought of it while up a ladder looking at things.
I am cogitatin’ on what to tell you to try with the lights. I have a set that I wired up to flash with an automotive turn signal flasher and a SPDT relay (I’ll explain that later). I have also made 1/2 scale crossing lights (using LEDs) and have a couple of methods of making them flash nicely. The hardest part with a real set is figuring out where the wires go and which ones you want to use. I’ll try to explain how to do that later. It ain’t hard, just takes an awful lot of words to convey the simple process.
I don’t want to scare you off, but I feel like I should offer some advice/warning about playing with electricity.
There are two properties of electricity that you should have some understanding of in order to play safe.
One is called Voltage… that is how much push there is behind the electricity to make it go. The other is Amperage… that is how much electricity there is flowing. High values of either of these can be dangerous. They are also interrelated: namely, the higher the Voltage, the more Amperage there can be.
Voltage is often abbreviated to Volts or “V”, and Amperage is abbreviated to Amps or “A” and often referred to as “Current”.
If you have 8 “D-cell” flashlight batteries in a row, they will put out 12 Volts just like a car battery, but being just little “D-cells” they cannot produce much current for the 12 Volts to push. They just don’t have the capability to produce massive amounts of electricity, maybe 2 or 3 Amps. And what little they can produce just won’t last long if you keep the current flowing… the chemical process inside the battery just can’t make it very fast.
However, a car battery is capable of producing up to 600 Amps (or more) of electricity and sustaining that amount for a long time. (You may have seen advertising about “Cold Cranking Amps”… that is what they are talking about… it takes a lot of power to start a car… most to cause the starter
After half an hour Google search for AAR SM-07, getting passed what I take to be German Soccor League scores, I found a short and not so informative article by Dupont that refered to it as refined Palm Oil, Aircraft/Automotive grade lubricant. A Dupont lube search gave no other information. My experience with Palm Oil is limited to just knowing it is very stickey.
I guess that would mean to use a thick oil instead of a light machine oil. (Maybe I wasn’t so far off suggesting Peanut butter!!!.. sorry, I keep remembering a Dennis the Menace comic where he is down on the ground in Mr. Wilson’s driveway with his wagon upside-down and the wheels off. He also has a jar of something in front of him and his hands are covered with some sort of glop… he is looking up at Mr. Wilson and says, “I always grease my wheels with Peanut butter.”)
I was thinking something more on the line of the white lithium grease we used to use on the distributor cam for the breaker arm of the points. Thin enough to be applied through a thin needle point, yet thick enough to stay in place. But PB would work, at least for a while.
Tons of great info. Went from none for moths to plenty. Love it.
oil Agree. the parts in side the bell are pretty clean. I will likely just spot lubricate the moving parts with a lighter machine oil.
…Electricity primer Thanks for the electricity lesson. I read it all and appreciate the summation, and warnings. I fired a nice antique once NOT knowing what I was doing so I am very cautious. Im not so new that I would short out a car battery with a scren driver but the explanations provided help a lot as a base foundation. I am going to test the bell with my battery charger on low/small battery. In the future I may power it with just a basic 12volt wall plug with clips on it maybe. Again, thanks for the info.
Thanks Tom. That makes sense. Thicker than machine but lighter than Dennis the Menace’s peanut butter. Im fortunate that the interior is clean and having no moving part issues that need freed up so maintenance oiling is all that needed.
So? It’s been a week… any noise from the bell? Can you still hear? Have the neighbor’s filed noise complaints for testing it at 2 AM?
Have you done any investigation of the wiring of the crossing lights?
When I got my “real” crossing lights, there were NO wires, so I don’t know what RR practice is with regard to how they wire them, but all that is needed is 2 wires to each bulb and one of those wires from each light can be connected together such that only 3 wires total are needed for connecting up 2 alternately flashing lights. (Even if there are multiple pairs of lights, they can be wired in parallel such that only 3 wires are required from the flasher circuit to the pole the lights are mounted on.
The idea is that the common wire from the pair of lights goes to one side of the power supply and the other side of the power supply is alternately connected to the other two wires by the flasher circuit.
Are the bulbs in your fixture, LEDs or Incandescents?
I have a simple flasher circuit that you can make from easily obtained parts (cheap automotive turn signal flasher) if they are incandescents, and another similar circuit that can be used if they are LEDs (but it requires a hefty resistor to draw enough power to make the flasher device work, which will be a bit harder to get if you don’t have some sort of electronic component store in your area… but, well… easily obtained from on-line mail-order places).
I can supply a schematic of the circuit and explain how to assemble the parts if needed. Easy and simple.