Kids were excited for their first day of school at Penngrove Elementary last Wednesday, but their parents, not so much when it came time to pick up their children.

About 1:40 p.m. railroad crossing arms on Woodward Avenue, Adobe Road and Main Street in Penngrove came down in full swing, lights flashing, bells ringing, and drivers stopped in anticipation of a train that hasn’t been seen here for more than 12 years.

Parents became anxious as the clock ticked, knowing their children were getting out of school and cars began to turn around in the middle of the road. A few brave drivers took a chance and went around the safety gates but most detoured back on Old Redwood Highway.

But heading south wouldn’t work either. The railroad crossing gates were down on Main St. as well.  Detouring on East Railroad Avenue over to Petaluma Hill Road was the only route accessible to the school, downtown Penngrove or east Adobe Road and caused a grid-lock that was still in effect at nearly 5 p.m.

“We’re pretty upset about it,” said John Sloat, Public Information Officer for the California Highway Patrol. “We (had) officers on the scene directing traffic and put a call into North Coast Railroad.”

Sloat said a few citizens tried to tie-up the arms with rope but without success. Traffic was backed up on Main Street and West Adobe Road for a couple hours as people began to come home from work. Sloat said it didn’t cause any problems on Woodward “but Main Street and Adobe (were) having some issues.”

Executive Director for the North Coast Railroad Authority Mitch Stogner said there was signal maintenance staff checking the operations of the signals that week as they are preparing for an upcoming inspection. “We had some bugs to work out and that’s what caused the problem.”

The “bugs” (or in this case, “bug”) Stogner refers to is a metal strap that triggered the railroad safety arms to go down.

Stogner says normally when signals are turned on, they’re activated and when a small metal wheel hits certain point, it triggers the arms to go down. Then when the train passes another signal, the arms go back up.

“The problem was once the system was activated, there was a metal ‘staple’ (strap) that triggered the arms go down,” said Stogner. And of course, no train to trigger the signal for the arms to go back up so “basically, it was a false alarm...but the problem has been completely resolved now.” He adds NCRA works closely with Summit Company, a company that is the signal maintenance operator for the train system.

“They are always out on the scene checking every signal so they’re the ones who resolved the issue,” said Stogner. 

By 5:30 p.m. the arms were up and traffic flow was back to normal.