Usually when a railroad has gone all in for modular color light signals they place an order for a
GRS D type, a
Safetran CLS-20 or
whatever the heck US&S is selling, but sometimes your railroad might be looking at a weak 3rd quarter or is funded by the public sector. In those cases you might want to go with one of the little guys because they are probably willing to sell that $10,000 aluminum box for $7,000. In this case your major minor players are L&W, Harmon, something I think might be related to Harris Technologies and whatever is ripping off the CLS-20.
First up,
L&W Industries is based in rural Missouri and made some inroads with Union Pacific or its predecessors in the 1980's before being generally rejected for the Safetran. It's current claim to fame is the LED searchlight still being bought by Amtrak for various terminal projects. Noticeable by the L&W logo I have found these in the wild from Virginia to Texas.
If you are looking to save some money by purchasing your signaling equipment from Harmon Industries, located near Kansas City, you will have to look elsewhere because they were purchased by GE in 2000. However some of their signals can be encountered from time to time, specifically on the Amtrak Shore Line and Atlantic City Line.
If you see a logo that sort of looks like an H with a swoop, I think this may have been something related to Harris Technologies that also got swept up in a GE joint venture in 2001. These also appeared on Amtrak and other commuter systems in the northeast and Caltrain.
Finally we have this blatant CLS-20 knockoff that I encountered on the low budget Buckingham Branch that have the same clam-shell look, but no glass lens or even that many LED modules. I'm not sure, but UP might also be investing in these bargain bin clunkers.
Well those are all the ones I can dig up at this time. If any of you are aware of others please let me know in the comments!
Modern Industries made several models of signals back in the 80s and 90s, including a GRS G knock off that Conrail used for a time.
ReplyDeleteI might have photos of more examples somewhere, but these were the ones I could easily recall. Thanks for the heads up!
DeleteWhile I am thinking of it. There are some modular dwarves that were used by PC marked RACO. RACO is of course one of the companies that merged to become Saftran
ReplyDeleteL&W is now CN's go-to manufacturer for signal equipment
ReplyDeleteI just found one of those Harris heads on a switch indicator in former DMIR territory (N. Highland, to be precise). I also found an H-2 that said Bronson & Randall on the back instead of US&S a little further up the line
ReplyDeleteI have pictures of them, and some other stuff, if you're interested
DeleteSure, you can send them to sturmovik@gmail.com
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