One side effect of taking photos from the back of long distance Amtrak trains is that from time to time you get a good shot of what might end up in a national news story. When the Mendon, Missouri grade crossing accident and derailment first took place in the summer of 2022 my impression was that it was located at a random farm crossing in the middle of nowhere. Since the former ATSF main line lost its searchlight signals over a decade ago there was no real need to check on the status of a notable signal such as this Conrail era signal that almost got wiped out in an Columbus, OH area derailment.
Anyway, while watching the above Plainly Difficult production on the incident, I spotted what appeared to be a signal location adjacent to the collision site on County Road 113. Checking the archives I discovered a clear photo of the accident site along with the Milepost 363 intermediate signals taken from the rear of the Southwest Chief in 2013.
In addition to the signals and the unprotected grade crossing we can also see the ATS inductors that allowed for 90mph speeds across the state of Missouri. These had been recently removed by the time of the accident due to PTC making the legacy system unnecessary. Anyway the moral of the story is to take photos of everything because you'll never know what might be historically significant.
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