michaelk wrote:Grump wrote:When an eastbound train arrives into Red Bank, Middletown, Hazlet, or Matawan station and stops in the station short of the road, after a set period of time the crossing gates will raise ahead of the train and allow auto traffic to pass. The conductor will key the gates to either keep them down or lower them if they already have raised when it is time to depart.
An interesting note is at Red Bank the gates at the mess of an intersection at Monmouth Street stay down, but the Shrewsbury Ave gates are the ones to come up.
Eastbounds also key the gates at Long Branch for Westwood Ave(and the pedestrian crossing on track 2 in the station).
When i was a kid (around the electrification) and the Matawan station used to be between Main and Atlantic if the gates went back up the engineer would have to creep up to main street to get to the (excuse the technical term) "thingies" between the rails to actuate the gates. Just curious if such set ups exist anymore or they put in key boxes to "correct" that? Is it still possible to creep up onto the "thingies"?
hahaa "thingies" - hahaha
The term you are looking for is "island circuit"
All grade Xings have an island circuit, and if the engineer stops the train too far back, the gates will come up at most stations with a crossing nearby. Then the engineer would have to creep up and activate the Xing by crawling up to it. Even stations with the keyboxes, the engineer can activate them by creeping up to the Xing. This happens when the conductor forgets to key the gates......
As far as I know (i was told), the keyboxes are on the Coast Line because they can't do the speed sensing crossings because of the electric catenary system. The "rail return circuit" part of the catenary system (think of the ground and rails as being a ground for the electricity) apparently affects those speed sensing Xings, and they don't work reliably. So all the crossings in the electric territory are "old fashioned" in the sense that they are set for the fastest track speed, and when a train is going slower, the gates stay down for a long time. For example, on the Raritan Line, when a westbound is stopped in Bridgewater, the gates at Polhemous Lane will go up once they sense the train is not coming (yet). Once the train gets close, the gates will reactivate and come down. A similar distance would be Hazlet and either Bethany Road or Beers St. If that was on the raritan line for example, the gates would probably go up because they could sense a train was stopped in hazlet station. However, because of the electrification, they stay down the entire time and aren't able to raise. When the gates rise in Hazlet station (and Beers St.) when a train is sitting there, its similar, but the conductor has to key them down, the system isn't set up to sense it automatically.
Confused yet?
I am haha
