User blog:WillTheArthurandBusterFan5050/Them Robot Railroad Crossing Gates

NOTE:THIS BLOG POST WAS MADE FOR MY PERSONAL USE and SELF-EXPRESSION, TO ADD PICTURES TO THE WIKI AND THE WEB and IS FOR RAILROAD FANATICS and OTHER INTERESTED READERS. ALSO NOTE THAT THIS IS A LONG BLOG.

I am William, and I just wanted to leave a blog about something in a certain episode, just something that really interest me. The Simpson's episode is "Them Robot." http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/Them,_Robot

A particular part of the episode featured my biggest interest in this world, a railroad crossing, with American flashing lights and crossing gates. And the crossing gates featured in this episode were two of the best crossing gates I've seen on animated shows.

It is because not only are the gates red and white striped, which is my favorite crossing gate stripe color, but the gates actually had lights mounted directly on them! Yes, gate lights, not just crossing signal lights! Ordinarilly crossing gates on animated shows do not have lights mounted directly on them, they are usually more as crossing gates used at parking facilities, toll booths, and restricted areas, and many crossing gates used outside the U.S. But the crossing gates featured in "Them Robot" were almost realistic and like real actual crossing gates used in America, or the United States. The signals were almost realistic too!

When I first saw this episode in 2012, I was not expecting to see this since, as I said, animated shows do not usually show crossing gate arms with lights mounted on them. Plus this is not the first railroad crossing to be featured on The Simpsons, there were like four other gated crossings featured on previous episodes, and they weren't all red and white. But now crossing gates on the Simpsons, so far, are starting to have lights on them! And them Robot was the first episode to show it and that was totally unexpected and exciting, at least to me! I'm a railfan, a railroad fanatic and I have Asperger's Syndrome, which is probably the reason I'm into railroad crossings.
 * One Simpsons episode, the one where Homer goes a month without drinking, featured a black and yellow striped crossing gate, and an American flashing light signal on the other side of the crossing.
 * Another episode, where Homer refuses to go to church with his family, there are two American-style flashing crossing signals, well almost American style, with gates that are also black and yellow striped, which unfortunately Homer destroyed trying to outrun the Flanders and beat the train, and he thought he out ran them but the Flanders jumped through an open Box Car.
 * In the episode where the Simpsons go to Florida and are accused of killing Captain Jack the Alligator (or Crocodile) and evade the law, the railroad crossing featured has black and white striped gates and that circle RXR sign, which was white when in reality it's yellow, and no flashing lights were used. This time Homer's family was with him and Marge tried to talk Homer out of it but he decided to risk not only his life but the life of his wife and kids and he smashed through and broke one of the gates and beat yet another train! But just when they thought they were safe they're hit by an Amtrak train heading the opposite direction, and the second of three Amtrak trains I've seen on the Simpsons (the first one had Mr. Burns in it, the third one had the Flanders riding in it.
 * In 2009 there's an episode where Nuns find Maggie after Marge goes blind due to the solar eclipes.  The railroad crossing features almost American Style crossing signals and for the first time ever, there are red and white striped gates on The Simpsons! I thought the Simpsons would never feature red and white gates until I saw this episode (but I only saw some of it, I couldn't watch the episode, and I don't watch the episode about Homer refusing to go to Church anymore, because I'm admittedly one of Jehovah's Witnesses and it would bother my conscience if I watched those two episodes.

While I'm generally into railroad crossings, especially gated crossings, I am a bit picky about railroad crossings and how they should be. My favorite crossings are the American style ones used in the U.S., Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, and Argentina to name a few countries. Not only do I like the crossing signals that have the white X-shape sign called the crossbuck (in the U.S. it says RAILROAD CROSSING in black letters, although some crossings in Ohio have them in red letters) below the sign a pair of round flashing red lights side-by-side of each other on separate sides of the pole, and another set of lights facing the opposite direction, which is also something not featured on every animated show but was featured in "Them Robot" and the red and white striped gate arms, but I also like the lights mounted on the gate arms.

However, even though these are the first animated gates to have lights on them, unlike the real crossing gates, these gates only have one light each on them. I'll admit that is better than gates with no lights on them at all, but real gates usually have three lights. The gates in "Them Robot" were still good and one of the best animated railroad gates I've ever seen, but could have been better. These are some screengrabs I found on this Wikia that show what I'm talking about.

http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/File:Them,_Robot_%28045%29.jpg http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/File:Them,_Robot_%28046%29.jpg http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/File:Them,_Robot_%28047%29.jpg

There's one more but I'm only using these three.

Now for my personal enjoyment, I decided to take these screenshots and modify them. It was almost, not quite, easy, but I decided to make the crossing gates more realistic and this is what I did:



I added two more lights on each crossing gate. How I did this, I copied the lights already on the gates and pasted two more of the like on each gate arm, although I did have to do some erasing to make the lights fit the backgrounds in the picture. Now the crossing gates look more realistic and more like the ones used in the U.S. And I hope that future Simpsons episodes will have crossing gates more like the ones in the provided pictures in this blog.

And not just on the Simpsons, it would be nice if more cartoons, especially more modern cartoons or modernized cartoons did crossing gates exactly like the ones in the modified screencaps, although admittedly I know a few other animated shows that have put lights on their gates, or are starting to: However, in Curious George, the Season 7 episode Curious George get's Winded, George and Bill, who calls George a "City Kid" for whatever reason, are in Mr. Flint Quint's place, and featured is an American-like crossing signal with a blank crossbuck, a set of forward-facing-only lights, and a gate that looks to have two red lights on them, however the gate is pink and red striped and the crossbuck is also pink. That's okay, just would have been better if the pink parts were white. It's not the first crossing gate featured in the series, there's a gated railroad crossing featured in an earlier episode, the Season 1 Episode: Curious George Train Master. The gates there are red and white and have American-style signals but the gate arms do not have lights and the gates are not shown horizontal nor are the lights shown flashing despite the presence of a train.
 * Curious George
 * Handy Manny
 * Franklin and Friends
 * Bubble Guppies

In two Handy Manny epsidoes, one of which is a Christmas epsidoe (I only know it because it was on a commercial) and the episode where Manny and the tools watch a pet chameleon, Elliot Minds the Store; Squeeze Makes a Promise, Manny has a trainset and it comes with a railroad crossing with an almost German-style crossbuck signs and a red and white striped gates with exactly three red light-like objects on them. The crossbucks don't have lights underneath them though and yet the gates do.

In Franklin and Friends there are at least two episodes that I have seen that feature a train set: Franklin and Snail Mail and Franklin the Engineer. Like in Handy Manny the crossbuck signs do not have lights but the gate arms have three red light-like bumps on them resembling gate lights, however, the gate arms are completely white and stripe-less.

In the Bubble Guppies episode Triple Track Train Race there are a few crossing signals and gates featured, including a couple drawings, but only  one of the featured crossing gates, the one in the music video to "Take Me Away on a Train," has a light mounted directly on it and like in the Simpson's Them Robot, that gate only has one light on it.

Now if only more cartoons would feature crossing gate arms with red lights on them, and I'm hoping one cartoon, Arthur, the P.B.S. Kids show, will feature it in an upcoming episode or two. Earlier this year I wrote letters to WGBH Boston and later to 9 Story Entertainment, where the letter should have gone in the first place because that's where the producer of Arthur is, and she got my letter and emailed me informing me of it. But I wrote them a letter asking them if they'd put a railroad crossing in the show and I even drew up some illustrations and mailed the letters and illustrations. If you're interested, to see the reply I was given from the producer of Arthur, click this link: http://arthur.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:WillTheArthurandBusterFan5050/I_Got_A_Letter_From_9_Story_Entertainment!

Admittedly I don't really need to see an animated cartoon feature a railroad crossing with gate lights, it's not like my life depends on it. It's just something I desire to see and to see more of and would like to see on more cartoons, especially cartoons that haven't ended or been cancelled. I'm almost sure I'm not the only one.

By the way, sorry to be nit-picking, but I did notice that the lights didn't look like they were working, which is fine, it was good for a start, but I took more matters into my hands by modifying the signal and gate lights, helping  them to look like they work. I will admit this is not my best effort but see what I did:







These pictures could be better than what I did and I wouldn't mind anyone taking these pictures I did and redoing them making them look more professional than I made them.

This was just something I thought I'd show and talk about and I do hope in a future Simpsons episode, the crossing gates will look more like what's in the pictures. I'd call them "my pictures" but they're really not, I just used them for my artwork.

I would also, if it is all right to do so, post these pictures on other Wikias and maybe Deviant Art. This is my Deviant Art Page: http://willm3luvtrains.deviantart.com/

Please remember, to save yourself some time and disappointment, these are just modified screengrabs and do not currently exist on any Simpson's episode so don't go looking for theseon any Simpson's episode.

Thank you for reading my blog and viewing the pictures I redid, well, modified, and thank you for putting up with me. Perhaps you learned something from this blog.