After dueling press conferences filled with fiery rhetoric on Friday, NJ Transit and a locomotive engineers union met in Washington Monday for talks to avoid a rail strike.

NJ Transit is preparing for a possible strike as pay negotiations with the union representing its engineers hit another roadblock.

NJ Transit and an engineers’ union appear to be steaming ahead to the first major rail strike in decades starting early Friday, even as both sides convene in Washington, D.C., where they pledged to continue negotiations.