How far away from the track are railroad crossing signs suppose to be?
The last RR crossing I did I made the center of the sign post approximately 11 scale feet from the center of the nearest set of tracks, i. e from the center line of the nearest roadbed. When I looked at a prototype RR crossing, I believe that number was more like 15 or 20 feet but it looked good to me as what I modeled was on a country road. The prototype RR crossing I looked at was on a main street. In addition, I didn’t have very much space as this was on a diorama so I got away with a little selective compression. Locomotives and cars would comfortably pass by them, however, and they didn’t look too close. 11 scale feet in HO is about 1.5’.
I recently got a Conrail stadards book off Ebay, and while I don’t remember seeing anything in it about passive crossing signs, for crossing signals, they were to be located ten feet (if I remember right) from the nearest railhead.
Kevin