Well, I see nobody has closed this thread, so I'll just add on almost 2 years later!!!
I bought a pair of the 30-11012 crossing gates at a train show and once again the guy swore they worked - but they didn't. One went up and down but VERY slowly, like it would have taken 5 or 6 minutes to go either way. The other gate went down and then sat there … grinding the gears! I found the problem with the slow gate was up in the gear box - the gear box housing simply needed to be loosened and tweaked - something was binding. That one now works perfect, but is a wee bit noisy.
The other one had a limit switch out of adjustment and was trying to shove the gate into the ground. Also the gate was bent, although I'm not sure if that was a factor - I did straighten the gate and adjusted the limit switch and it now works nicely and is very quiet. Almost perfect except for one thing. In the raised position, when the lights should be off, they are barely flashing - you can just barely see them. If I squeeze the gearbox (gently) they will either get brighter and go into a normal flash mode, or they will go out - it's quite sensitive. So I'm sure the remining problem is an electrical contact problem with the limit switches. The problem is I don't know electrically what is supposed to turn the lights off. I think it's when the upper limit switch is activated, or open I presume.
I guess when I have renewed energy and enthusiasm in the morning I'll pull the cover off the gearbox (been avoiding that til now) and clean things out - sounds like an intermittent connection issue, so some very judicious contact cleaning may be in order.
Good times!!!
George
