Someone said about the earlier rr crossings having an employee in a box to operate the signals?

Question

Does anyone have any pictures of these earlier crossings? In what years were these? What exactly did they do? e.g. wave a latern?

Answer 1

There were gates the crossing watchman could lower manually.

Heck, some railway museums still have a flagman climb off to flag highway crossings, just to make sure cars don't hit the train... and there are jerks in automobiles who are so offended that their day might be held up for 5 seconds that they'll try to kill the flagman with their car.

Answer 2

called a gateman.

used to have a little bungalo near the crossing.

would get advance from a dispatcher and then pull the gates down.

cross the train and then release the gates.

old picture.

do a web search for gate person.

railroads of america

good luck

Answer 3

well long days ago  they had flag man to stop the traffic

when a train approached a  railroad crossing

Answer 4

Yes, Hogback is correct.  These people were called "level crossing keepers", "crossing keepers" or "gate keepers".  While boom gates may have been used in later times, the usual arrangement in earlier days was actually gates on hinges.  Sometimes houses were built for these people close to the crossing and the lady of the house was often the keeper.   Here are one French and two British keeper's houses.  

http://blancargent.altervista.org/Englis...

http://www.martin.loader.btinternet.co.u...

http://www.2d53.co.uk/bangor/George%20Cr...

Answer 5

Yes, manually-lowered gates were widespread in the United States up to the middle of the 20th century. Crossings had shanties or little towers housing a crewman who would activate the gates for approaching trains. More advanced circuitry eventually eliminated the need for human presence at crossings, but I know for fact that New Jersey Transit had some manual gates into the early eighties. And that's only one example.

Answer 6

I know in Europe there were manned crossing gates, probably right up to the beginning of WWII. Trains were run on a schedule and on time.  Crossing guards would manually lower the gates on the approach of a train or on the time the train was due to arrive.

I don't know if there were any manually operated gates employed in the US, though.