Old Railroad Crossings On The North Jersey Coast Line

The North Jersey Coast Line is known on NJ Transit for providing rail service paralleling down the Jersey Shore, not just for work commuters but also for people during the summer months who go down and spend the day at the beach. It is also known by other people, specifically railfans, like me, because many of the crossing setups, particularly between Long Branch and Bay Head has old equipment, which includes 8 inch crossing lights (which are old compared to modern crossings), and older equipment from WRRS, Safetran and WC Hayes, a lot of which dates back as far as around 50 years ago. For the longest time, NJ Transit has been using mechanical bells at most of their crossings, but over the last couple years, quite a number of crossings have been gradually upgraded with e-bells and crossing LED lights, many of which have taken place along the North Jersey Coast Line, so back in the summer, I decided to make a trip down to the Coast Line and film as many remaining old railroad crossings as I could find, and I ended up filming so many crossings that I had to make three different trips down the line. I think I should also note that a crossing in Asbury Park has been closed and another one in Point Pleasant Beach was reconstructed into a one-way road during the upgrade (Summerfield Avenue and Formam Avenue).

The only crossing on my list that got upgraded before I could film it was Broadway in Point Pleasant Beach. The original setup consisted of all-Safetran equipment, including the cantilever, signal bases, gate mechanisms, 12x24” incandescent lights, and the two mechanical bells. During the upgrade, a couple new signal bases were put in from Siemens, including one of the gate mechanisms, but more notably, all 8 pairs of the Safetran 12x24” lights are now LED (formally incandescents), and the two mechanical bells are now Safetran Type 3 e-bells. The only thing that seems to have been unchanged though was the Safetran cantilever.

Anyway, like I said earlier, I had to make three different trips down the line to get all the crossings I wanted to record. Aside from the crossings, I also caught ALP-45DP 4534 multiple times, which is the 100th made Bombardier locomotive and also one of a few Veterans units on NJT on the first trip, and a GP40 on the second trip, which were pretty cool standouts.

In the end, I was able to film just about all the old remaining crossings and also threw in a few slightly newer crossings as well, making a total of 18 crossings filmed (accidentally typed 17 at the beginning of the video). It took me awhile to get everything going, but I’m really happy to finally share this video with everyone, and I hope everyone enjoys it as much as I did filming the crossings. As sad as it is to say, as time goes on, the Coast Line is going to become quite a bit different than it used to be, and I’m just glad I was able to get the crossings I was able to get.


And finally, for those of you interested, here are the following trains I caught:

1. 4331 (August 19, 2019)
2. 4344 (August 19, 2019)
3. 4724 (July 20, 2019)
4. 4728 (July 20, 2019)
5. 4729 (July 20, 2019)
6. 4732 (July 20, 2019)
7. 4733 (July 20, 2019)
8. 4736 (July 20, 2019)
9. 4737 (July 20, 2019)
10. 4740 (July 20, 2019)
11. 4741 (July 20, 2019)
12. 4732 (October 6, 2019)
13. 4745 (July 20, 2019)
14. 4748 (July 20, 2019)
15. 4752 (July 20, 2019)
16. 4753 (July 20, 2019)
17. 4756 (July 20, 2019)
18. 4737 (October 6, 2019)
19. 4740 (October 6, 2019)