Lionel Pre- and Post-War 152 Crossing Gate Repair Questions (MTH repro too)

I had that problem with my original gate from my first set. It was the spring for sure. Tried a rubber band with poor results. Then I got lucky, found a good base missing it's gate at a train show and swapped out the parts. This did the job! These parts are not reproduced, so this may be the only way to fix it. York will have junk boxes filled with them!  Good luck!      Mike

@Andrew B. posted:

We have a half-dozen of these gates that are in various states of inoperability following the last two years of Train Gardens. I'm going to attempt to repair, but wanted to see if anyone on here has experience with them.

The main issue seems to be that, often, the arm does not return to the "up" position. Spring adjustment doesn't seem to make much difference. Are people seeing the spring/plunger magnetize from repeated energizing of the coil? Or is it a matter of debris in the shaft in which the plunger rides? Or just a lubrication matter?

If you happen to have any other thoughts or experience, please share!

Andrew, I've had that problem on two of my gates, and while I'm sure there may be more elegant solutions, what I ended up doing was hanging a nut or two off the bottom end of the arm on an S-shaped wire, increasing the counterweight trying to lift the arm. Here's a crop showing (barely!) the nut dangling beneath the lower end of the arm:

I'm sure there's some better/less visible way to add weight to the bottom of the arm (pieces of lead wheel weights painted black and glued to the arm come to mind), but so far my kludge has been good enough to carry on until I can put out the rest of the layout 'fires'!

Lubricate both the solenoid and the pivot for the arm(s).  If that doesn't work I added rectangular brass pieces inside the stamped metal "counterweights."