Photo History Trivia Location Where is it?

[alcoAL]

it looks like Bethpage Rd looking towards Woodbury RD

[alcoAL]

I happened to be in Hicksville today & got these 2 shots:

Bethpage Road looking south towards Woodbury Rd


And looking north

[LIRR Agent - Retired]

I think you hit the nail on the head alcoAL.
LIRR Agent - Retired

[rs31556]

Good eye Al.

[milepost39]

I have a question on the operation of the manual gates.

Did the operator pull them down by hand or were they hydraulic?
In the photo there are 4 gates, were they connected together underground so when one was pulled down they all came down?  Or did the operator have to run around and pull each one down?

Did the operator lower the gates as per a RR time table, or when he heard the train coming?

I imagine that this job must have been a challenge in areas on Western LI or Queens that were double tracked and saw more traffic?  Or was it just another time when drivers had more patience.

Thanks,
Pete

[vince]

Hi Pete,
The gates were controlled by two cranks on the pedestal (usually) closest to the watchmans shanty.
You turned the two crank handles in opposite directions to lower the gates. You reversed that procedure to raise the gates. The gates were well counterbalanced and it was an easy task for a ten year old boy (myself) to operate the gates. The watchman at the Hook Creek Blvd crossing in Rosedale was a family friend and I would stop to see him sometimes after school. (PS 38) The gates themselves were constructed of 3/4 x 6 pine boards and were quite light weight. There was a brass ring, about 3 inches in diameter that hung by a small chain from the control pedestal. When the gates were fully raised this ring was slipped over the two crank handles which prevented the cranks from rotating and prevented unwanted movement of the gates. Two gates were contolled by each crank handle on a 4 gate crossing. The crank motion was distributed by chains running in well greased and sealed pipe guides. They operated very smoothly but you were aware of the mass of the whole contraption when you operated it.
No challenge operating a busy crossing at all. The bell in the shanty began ringing a steady ding ding ding ding (it was a small bell) and the watchman walked out, blew his whistle and traffic stopped (really!) and he lowered the gates.
IIRC the bell gave about a two minute warning.  
The watchmans shantys were heated in electric territory by MU-car electric baseboard or underseat heaters. The underseat unit was most used as it fit nicely in the small shantys.

Rant ON!
You hear a lot these days from the various rail roads about Operation Lifesaver regarding grade crossing safety.   OPERATION LIFESAVER! (OLS) yada yada yada.   It's BULLSHIT!
If the railroads were TRULY interested in protecting life and securing their ROW they would install aas a replacement for the crossing pictures at the beginning of this thread WITH FOUR GATES instead of the TWO automatic gates they use.
These two gate (read cheaper) systems INVITE idiots to run around the gates. And there ARE a lot of idiots who do this and traumatize some poor engineer and conductor every year.

The manual four gate crossings didn't have a run-around-the-gate-I'm-late problem. A four gate automatic would solve the problem. But nooo, the RR's have "education" programs like OLS.  HA!
There is no cure for stupid but stupid wouldn't want to chip the paint on his 'wheels' by busting through a 4 gate automatic gate system.  The gates ARE designed to easily break if emergency requires.
Rant off!

Oh and btw, I'm putting the finishing touches to the Vanderbilt Avenue Yard at the Flatbush Terminal. The terminal is done. I made a single shape for all the underground platforms, passenger and meat tracks and am doing the same for the Vanderbilt Yard platforms. 400 meters long x 111 meters wide 8 tracks for the west end. Ref the 1951 blueprints.
 

 
 

[Block Limit]

and You only need the 4 gates at the LARGER crossings.
Most smaller 2 lane roads could be taken care of by installing longer arms on the existing gates.
If you look at the length of the gate arms at larger crossings (Stewart Ave, Bethpage) for example, they still use the 2 gate system and the arms cover what appears to be 2.5 lanes.
In this clip about a GG1 that NJT restored in the 1980's there is a clip at South Amboy, showing the once proud art of changing engines with passengers on a revenue train. An act almost unthinkable due to our love affair with being a sueciety
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tC6W0XEqOLw&feature=related
time stamp 3:30
Notice the modern gates being installed in the foreground of the old hand crank gates.

[railfan365]

With regard to changing engines on a train with passengers on board, that's something that I've experienced as an Amtrak passenger as recently as 2001. On those occasions, nobody semed to be unduly upset by a fairly smooth hitch.

[Ocala Mike]

That's exactly how I remember the operation, vince.  Back around 1955, I spent much of a summer "railfanning" (they didn't call it that back then) the Tulip Ave. crossing in Floral Park.  This was an EXTREMELY busy crossing at rush hour, and the crossing guard barely had time to sit down.

Your description of the bell signal he got is spot on, and your mentioning of the "brass ring" he used to secure the gates is also.

[milepost39]

Thanks for the replies and info about this lost bit of RR history.  I have early dim memories of the manual gates going back to 1973 when I was five years old.  My dad took me to watch trains at either Sunnyside or most often Maspeth Ave at the yard, seeing as we were from Maspeth (68th street).  We move to E Northport in '74 but I went back to visit my grandparents.  I recall that by '74 Maspeth Ave had switched over to auto gates.

Luckily my dad got some shots of the old gates and shanty as well as the yard.  I shared them with Art and he posted them here:

http://arrts-arrchives.com/HPSSRR.html

My photos are the color ones dated 1973.  Besides the gates/shanty my fav is the pristine PC boxcar!  That was a great spot to watch trains.  We'd drive down Rust St to Phelps Dodge private crossing and then make the U-turn back to Maspeth Ave.

Peter Ball

[LIRR Agent - Retired]

Perhaps an explanation of the crossings in Babylon may be in order since I said knowing Babylon for years.  Also there seems to be a strong interest in manual gates.  Comining from the west the first crossing was Great East Neck Rd. in West Babylon.  There were two sets of manual gates, one for the Montauk  branch and one for the Central branch.  They were both controlled by a Gateman whose shanty was on the south side of the tracks on the west side of Great East Neck Rd.
The next crossing was Little East Neck Rd.  which had  flashers but no gates.  I saw several near misses there.  
Next was Litchfield Ave.  which had flashers also, but they were the kind that sat in the middle of the road.
The next crossing was Carll Ave at the west end of the Babylon station.  This crossing had manual gates.
Next was Depot Place at east end of the station.  Manual gates also.  They were controlled by the Gateman at Deer Park Ave.  They seemed to stay down quite a bit.
 Deer Park Ave was next with Manual gates.  This was a two man job.  One man to operate the gates and one to direct  traffic.  Finally was Cooper St which had a man with a lollipop sign

[NYandW]

Nice material, Jim! Vince here is the Shanty type:



Farmingdale, view east

Here's the middle of road type, 1971, however.  

[Ernie]

The bell in the shanty began ringing a steady ding ding ding ding (it was a small bell) and the watchman walked out, blew his whistle and traffic stopped (really!) and he lowered the gates. IIRC the bell gave about a two minute warning.

Now that is the part that fascinates me. What drove the bell? What sensed the train was 2 minutes out?

Anyone know?

[Ocala Mike]

The same type of circuitry that drove the block signals; detected the presence of a train at a certain distance from the crossing and transmitted a ring signal to the receiver in the shanty.  Were there false positives?  Yes.

[M1_9174]

So where am I???