The Kiddieland Railroads only crossing gate. Kiddieland Amusement Park. Melrose Park Illinois USA. November 2006.

I took this photo one morning on My way to work, back in early November of 2006. This behind the scenes photo, was taken from the east parking lot, looking through a chain link fence.

This is the one and only railroad crossing gate on the miniature 14 inch track guage Kiddieland RR.
This gate, is modeled after an older style of railroad crossing gates from the steam era.
Todays modern railroad gates are of an offset design, and have a single breakaway arm.

The gate shown here, is an older 2 blade straight arm design from the 1930's and 40's era. The black and white stripes were the industry standard on American railroad crossing gates untill
1972, when the current red and white was adopted for safety and visibility. Many crossing gates from this period were manually controlled from an operators tower, and were usually powered
pnuematically -by compressed air -or electric motors. Some were chain drived or even hand cranked back in the early crossing gate days. Notice the bell on the electric motor box.

Many older style "Straight Gates", can be found in operation today on many of the drawbridges on the Chicago River.

Kiddieland had just closed for the season approximately 2 weeks before I took this photo.