The Pascack Valley Line Thread

On Saturday, the crossing gates at New Milford Av could not make up their minds. When I got to the crossing, the gates were down. Then they went up halfway, came back down, and about 10 seconds later, went all the way up and the lights shut off. It was about time for #2114 to pass through. Just as I crossed over the track, I saw the lights flashing again in my rearview mirror. The gates came down and train went through the crossing.

Consequently, trains through here have been going through this crossing at a crawl (~15mph or less) for months now, as some sort of permanent speed restriction. There was no restriction here before; trains would regularly go through at about 40-45 mph.

Any idea why the gates were acting this way and the reason for the new speed restriction? Could they be related?

We had a crossing here on CSX, Turned out the problem came from local electric company's ground was bad somewhere around the meter. Not fully available of fix it sounded like a floating ground . Same thing can happen in your home with floating grounds. Light dim burning out quickly etc depending on loads of one leg of 120 vs other leg.

I saw #4120 pulling a passenger train thru Westwood this morning. Nice to see the remaining F40's still hanging on!