Railroad Crossings with Incandescent Lights Volume 1

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Since lighting was introduced on railroad crossings in the early 1900s, the incandescent lightbulb was the method of illumination. Railroad crossing lightbulbs were 12VDC instead of the standard household 120VAC. Along with that, railroad crossing incandescent light housings used aluminum reflectors that increase the brightness of the lightbulbs, and lenses were used to focus the light into oncoming traffic. These were the standard type of railroad crossing light throughout the entire 20th century. In the 1990s, LED, or light-emitting-diode modules started to become popular after the invention of the blue and white LEDs. One of the first commercial uses of the LED in the 1990s were railroad crossings and traffic signals. Only a select few railroads adopted LEDs early on, such as Union Pacific or BC Rail. Then came the 21st century, and LEDs were pretty much the standard for most new signal installations. Then starting in the 2010s, railroads began retrofitting their existing incandescent lights with LED modules, while others that were still largely 8 inch replaced the lights all together.

Today, only a select few areas still have incandescent lights. In Canada, the majority of provinces are largely-to all LED, with the busy mainlines cross-country being 100% LED. On select few shortlines and branchlines in British Columbia and Saskatchewan, a few incandescent lights still remain, though they are gradually being phased out. In Ontario however, many shortlines, CN branchlines, and the Ontario Northland Railway still have many incandescent lights.

Looking down south of the border into the United States, it varies between incandescent lights still being common to them being completely extinct. On the Union Pacific Railroad, it is almost 100% LED nowadays. On BNSF and CSX, some lines still retain many incandescent lights, while some are completley LED now. On the Norfolk Southern Railway, it is still largely incandescent (aside from some lines that have been state-funded to be LED upgraded) and in fact, most "in-kind" light or signal replacements come with new incandescent lights. On the many regional/shortline railroads, it really varies. So, depending where you live, it is best to film incandescent crossings before their time runs out! In fact, over half of the crossings featured in this video are now LED.

Also noting that since this is a compilation, almost all of the videos that have been put here were shortened. So, feel free to ask me to link you to the full videos of these crossings.

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