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Encounters Of The Traffic
Signal Kind
I have thought traffic lights were interesting as long as I can remember. As a kid I used to like to get my younger sister to ride a bicycle around my parents basement as I ran around changing the colors on home-made paper traffic lights that I taped to the walls. Lionel train switches could also be used (without the yellow) because by flipping the lever on the switch the indicator on the switch would go from green to red or the reverse. I made paper traffic lights by drawing the shape of a 4 way signal with visors on a piece of paper and cutting 3 holes out for the colored lenses. Then I would cut a slit in the paper next to the side of the drawing and put a piece of paper in the slit that I could slide back and forth behind the 3 holes in the front sheet. Then put the correct red yellow and green colors in different places on the back piece of paper and I could change the colors of the light by sliding the paper back and forth.
The next step in my life as far as traffic signals are concerned was around the same time as the paper traffic lights. I don't remember exactly how old I was, but I was with my father one evening as he was taking the family car out to fill up the gas tank. The gas station that he went to was on the corner of an intersection that had two - 4 way cluster traffic signals hanging over the intersection and a pole on each corner with 2 signal heads on each pole facing opposing directions of traffic. My dad would go to this gas station regularly and when I would go with him, I would like to walk out to the corner and sit on the fire hydrant that was there and watch the 2 opposing traffic signal heads cycle until dad was ready to go. One evening it was getting dark, but the sun had not gone down completely and I was sitting on that fire hydrant while dad was filling up the car. My curiosity got the best of me and I decided that I wanted to touch a traffic signal. The only way I was going to achieve this was to climb up the pole on that corner. I wanted to do it, so up I went. Dad was not paying attention to what I was doing and all of a sudden he started hearing car horns beeping. He turned around to see what was happening and to his surprise, he saw his kid hanging on to the top of the pole with his face in front of the green light and his hand touching the lens. He shouted to me to get down from there, so I did. I didn't know why the cars were beeping at me then, but I figure now that the drivers must have thought that I was trying to vandalize the light. To this day when my dad tells people about my traffic signal collection, he has to tell that story as well.
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When I was about 19 or 20 years old I started attending hobby shows where one could find Lionel trains since that was one of my hobbies. I no longer buy new Lionel train products due to their decision to move all their manufacturing jobs over to
China, but that is another story. Normally when attending one of these shows in local high school gyms or similar buildings, I would walk in and browse from table to table for any items that might catch my eye. One show in particular, when I walked into the gym, I saw across the room an eight inch aluminum eagle traffic signal on a pole. I forgot all about the trains for the rest of that day. I went straight over to the table with the traffic light and to my delight it had a for sale sign on it. I thought, IT IS MINE!!! I bought the signal and stand for $80. That is how I got my first traffic signal. The picture on the left is of that
signal the way it was when I bought it - minus the orange controller box.
This signal came with a switch on the back and a flasher disc in each socket so that when you turned it on, all 3 lights would flash at random. This was totally unacceptable to me. I wanted the light to be as realistic as possible. At the time, I didn't have a way to make the light sequence as they do on the street, so the next best thing was to put a switch on the pole for each light bulb. This way I could have the light be red, yellow or green without the other lights being on or flashing. My hope was that someday the light would sequence, but this seemed like a goal that might not ever be reached, so the switches would have to do. |
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As I got older, I eventually moved out of my parents house and my mother made sure I took the traffic light with me! My hobby with Lionel trains led me to join the LCCA. This is a Lionel train collecting club which publishes
two club magazines six times a year. One of these magazines has articles in it from the members of the club. One article in the magazine was about building a simple timer to turn on and off a relay. After building a couple of these timers, I figured out how to hook them up together so that they would reset themselves and cycle continuously. I checked to make sure that the relays being used could handle the electricity for the light bulbs I had in the traffic signal and once that test was passed, I built a timer to make my traffic signal sequence as it should. The picture on the left is of the first timer that I built.
This timer satisfied me for a long time, but eventually I started to wonder if it were possible to build a bigger one that would control 2 opposing directions of traffic signals. I played with the idea for a long time and eventually came up with a rough idea of how it could be done. But now I would need another traffic signal to use with the timer if I built it. |
Having developed another hobby along the way of computers and internet surfing, I set out one day to see if I could find anything on the web about used traffic signals for sale. Eventually I came across this site belonging to "Signalfan" who is another traffic signal collector who lived in California at the time. I emailed him and asked about how I could get a hold of more traffic lights. He told me that Ebay is a pretty good place to find them. That email has led me to the collection that I have built today. I originally just set out to get one or two more signals to use with the timers that I built myself, but now I have collected quite a few variations of signals and some less common lenses also.
The signal shown on this page is still in my collection, but I took it off the stand and it now hangs from the ceiling in my basement.
I hope you have enjoyed reading about my fascination with traffic signals!