Delaware and Raritan River Railroad-General Discussion

Yellowbrook road as of today. The ballast is being added with a little car towed by a tamper.

These are sitting at Squankum Road.
Looks like they’ll be replacing the old crossings there soon?

Two more things before I forget.

1. The Jewish security firm was not seen today.

2. Sycamore Ave is having issues now too. Lights come on only seconds before the train crosses. Two people stopped abruptly but then floored it across. 3 seconds later and they would’ve been hit.

Well well well… What do we have here?

I saw that Toy Train notice on FB this morning. Encouraging, to say the least.

Any idea when the southbound connector will be installed?? Pretty exciting stuff happening with rebuilding the rail line but nothing about it in the Asbury Park Press.

Jersey Shore Online mentioned the trackwork. Nothing since then as far as I can tell.

No work on the South wye leg yet.

Toys For Tots train is kinda cool. A bit different to the usual Santa train you’d see. Expect a big turnout, especially if Pine Creek isn’t doing their Santa train again this year. This is something Farmingdale has wanted for a very long time.

OK, about 21 working days if they're gonna get connected by 31 July. They'll need to go all A&E to get it done. Track between Prestone switch and Okerson, track (and crossing) Fairfield-Yellowbrook, grade work, track, crossing, and switch Adelphia to Railroad Ave, and of course ballast and alignment for the entire length. Also crossing signs or signals (or gates?). Gonna be busy and interesting.
I suspect the pipework in Farmingdale caused them to juggle their schedule and may have delayed them somewhat. It was, after all, gummint work.

CharlieL wrote: ↑Sat Jul 01, 2023 2:33 pm OK, about 21 working days if they're gonna get connected by 31 July. They'll need to go all A&E to get it done. Track between Prestone switch and Okerson, track (and crossing) Fairfield-Yellowbrook, grade work, track, crossing, and switch Adelphia to Railroad Ave, and of course ballast and alignment for the entire length. Also crossing signs or signals (or gates?). Gonna be busy and interesting.
I suspect the pipework in Farmingdale caused them to juggle their schedule and may have delayed them somewhat. It was, after all, gummint work.

They could get away with delaying crossing protection. A simple crossbuck followed by having the conductor or whoever flag the crossing down, like what they do now with the broken crossings, can suffice, but wouldn't be ideal.

July 31 probably isn't going to be reached by this point, but August or September is still very possible and realistic, especially including the wye

Reading these posts, it’s amazing how bad some of these crossing signals function up north: Never seen or even heard of anything like this down in south jersey. Is there any particular reason for this?

Poor maintenance by Conrail and C&D for starters, but I have to wonder how difficult it is to get parts for these crossings.

A significant portion of these crossings were put up by Conrail in the 80s as part of a crossing improvement program. This was done as cheaply as possible, by assembling the crossings with parts from many different manufacturers. Some of which are no longer in business or were bought out by other companies. All these 8 inch lights and old relays, no one really makes them anymore…

I understand there’s also factors like bad weather and such but it’s hard to believe in a small state there’s such a big difference in crossing protection issues on the same railroad.

Well, in Farmingdale there was a power surge last summer that took the lights out for two months or so. C&D got them working but then a car knocked down the pole that feeds power into the Central Ave crossing. Ever since then neither Central Ave or Main Street have worked and that was over 6 months ago. New pole is just sitting there waiting to get put up, already had the wire on it and everything.

Old Tavern Road was fixed again too but it was re wired in an extremely strange way. Instead of replacing the wire that runs down the track that trips the lights, they had new wires come directly out of the relay case, laid them on the ballast, and then attached it to the track directly adjacent to the case. (?!?!?!?!)

Each railroad that I’ve seen in NJ seems to have a different approach to crossing maintenance. How repairs are done, when they are done, designs of new crossings, etc. But in general it seems that when a crossing around here quits working, repairs aren’t done until months afterwards.

Curiously, CMSL seems to have a similar situation. Many old crossings of outdated design and construction, poor maintenance by the previous railroad, or generally worn out. Yet they manage to not only keep the crossings working, but working reliably. Their failure rate is much less than what’s seen on the C&D, and I’m genuinely curious as to why…

Bracdude181 wrote: ↑Sun Jul 02, 2023 11:25 am Old Tavern Road was fixed again too but it was re wired in an extremely strange way. Instead of replacing the wire that runs down the track that trips the lights, they had new wires come directly out of the relay case, laid them on the ballast, and then attached it to the track directly adjacent to the case. (?!?!?!?!)

Old Tavern Road is listed on the current System Bulletin Order as "Island Circuit Only". That is a quicker fix and the regular procedure is for the train to stop at the point the frontmost wheels short the island circuit and actuate the signals. The train must then not cross for a certain time period, 20 seconds is my recollection subject to check, after which time the engineer can sound the horn and proceed across.

Ahh ok. They did that to County Line and James Street too but there it makes more sense. James Street because now they can work Woodhaven without tripping the lights. County Line was probably setup like that because of how bad that intersection there is.

Still never seen wires like that though.

I personally think C&D is waiting for Freehold-Farmingdale to be reconnected before they do the crossings. They will need to wire up the crossings between Okerson Rd and Railroad Ave in addition to put in crossing protections, so I'd imagine it would make more sense to do the crossings on the entire line at once, where maybe they could get a bulk deal on gates/lights from a manufacturer.