Did crossings with hand operated gates have warning devices like today's have bells?
Thank you
Al

In the mid-1960's, I was an occasional volunteer with George Hart's Rail Tours operation on the Maryland & Pennsylvania RR in York, Pa. The main track crossing of East Market Street, immediately north of the station in York, featured a set of hand-cranked gates. There was a bell, similar to a streetcar gong, on the gate adjacent to the crank. It had a hand clapper, and one was supposed to crank down the gate with one hand while dinging the bell with the other. At the same time, one had to keep his eye on on-coming traffic, as Market Street at that time was one-way eastbound U.S. Route 30.

As I recall (I was a kid at the time), the old IHB Lincoln Avenue crossing in Dolton, Illinois featured a steam locomotive bell as the warning. Wish there was a photo of that elevated structure showing the bell.

Les

When the Chicago Lake Street Elevated operated oat ground level west of Laramie up to Harlem Avenue in Oak Park, the crossing gates were manually operated. When a train approached, the operator would come out of his little shanty between the tracks and pull a rope which rang a locomotive bell, then wrestle the levers which lowered and raised the crossing gates. These levers were similar to what would be found in a junction tower.

I have seen film/video of European gate mechanisms where the bell ringing is part of the mechanism. As you crank them down the bell rings.

I know there's at least one reader here that remembers the hand-cranked gates on the PRR New York & Long Branch in New Jersey......

As I recall, the Western Maryland Railway grade crossing at Garrison Boulevard in Baltimore at their Arlington station did have an electric bell that sounded just before the attendant cranked the gates down. When playing in "the woods" at the WM/BTC trolley crossing we would listen for the bell to run to the diamond and watch the trains roll by. Ah, the memories! --- Ray

Back in my college days in the late 60s, I occasionally hung out with the street crossing watchman at the New Haven Railroad's Mill Street crossing in the south end of Cumberland, Rhode Island. I helped the fellow lower the gates for the nightly freight from the New Haven's Northup Avenue yard in Providence to Worcester that usually passed by the crossing at around 10 PM. This was on the former and now Providence and Worcester Railroad line up the Blackstone River valley.

I have no idea who manufactured the gate mechanism, maybe Fairbanks-Morse or Buda Manufacturing Company. All four gates were lowered with one crank located in the gate housing next to the crossing watchman's shanty. There were bells on each side of the street in one of the gate housings that would automatically ring through some kind of mechanical connection to the gates as they moved down and then back up.

This brings back fond memories. The crossing shanty and gates had no electrical service so the warning lights hanging on the gates were kerosene crossing gate lamps and there was a kero lamp inside the shanty along with a bot-bellied stove. The shanty could hold maybe two people at a time and it got hot in there when the stove was going.

There was a similar crossing watchman & shanty just up the tracks about 300 feet for the Titus & High street crossing which went through a complicated street intersection.

Ah, memories of our youth!

I am not the person mentioned....but I remember very clearly hand cranked crossing gates at the Washington Ave. crossing on the Erie's Newark Branch in Nutley, NJ. That crossing was manned until shortly after the E-L merger when passenger service was ended on the Newark Branch. I don't now remember how the bell was operated, but the job remained as long as there was passenger service, after that it became a flagged crossing. By the time I worked there as an engineer, all of the crossings were stop and flag your way over through Nutley and Belleville, NJ

One more thought comes to mind. There were shelves of kerosene lanterns next to the gateman's shanty that were lighted and hung on the gates as dusk fell. No flashing electric lights on those hand-cranked gates! --- Ray

To answer the OP's question-it depends on the era. Very early gated highway crossings (pre-1875) probably had neither warning bells or lights. Warning bells most likely started appearing as crossing safety equipment around 1875 and could probably be considered fairly common by 1900. As the others have mentioned, the method of operation depended on the design and could be mechanical, electro-mechanical or air operated.

Electric lights may have appeared as early as the 1880s, but did not become common until sometime around 1910-1920, depending on the region.

The Santa Fe crossing of Colorado Blvd. in Pasadena had gates controlled by an operator in a tower on the north side of the street. Not sure whether they were manual or electric. The tower had a locomotive-style bell that the operator would ring as the gates went down. One can imagine that the operator might have had some friends drop by on Jan. 1 because the tower had a good view of the Rose Parade. Eventually, the manual control was replaced by a track circuit, probably in the 1950s or 60s. An interesting feature of the area was Garstang's model RR shop, which was the place to go for Lionel cars and accessories; as I recall, it was on the north side of the street, just west of the Santa Fe. Today's Gold Line light rail service on the old ATSF route avoids crossing Colorado by going underneath through a tunnel (which I call "Pasadena's First Subway).