Well, there is also an obsolete prototype for the Lionel crossing gate that was counterbalanced so that it required energy to be lowered and defaulted to "up".
Manually operated gates (surely now extinct except on railway museum tracks) were lowered by a crank mechanism, or, more commonly, by air pressure. The crossing tender would manually pump up air pressure, which, through a buried network of pipes, pressurized the mechanism at the base of each gate and lowered the arm. Sometimes, if the crossing was occupied for a long time (or if there was an air leak), one or more of the gates would attempt to raise itself and more pumping would be required. The gates were counterbalanced so that the counterbalance would be just heavy enough to raise the gates once air pressure was removed. They usually bounced two or three times when they came to fully upright position, which then was often less than straight up, due to pole lines carrying utilities beside streets in towns.
Crossing Watchmen were often employees with good service records who had sustained an illness or injury which rendered them unfit to continue in service in their former craft (usually, Brakeman, Switchman, or one of the shop crafts) and thus given what was considered "light duty." I have heard of ice accumulation in severe winter storms becoming sufficient to lower pneumatic gates, and Watchmen would have to hammer the ice off of them to reposition them upright.
