Time zone change on DateTime method (Rails 4.2.8) - ruby-on-rails

Question

I am trying to upgrade from rails 4.2.7 to 4.2.8 and found a case where the DateTime method of rails switches the time zone to local on reload from database which was not seen in rails 4.2.7. On rails 4.2.8, the unit test of my app rely on the DateTime method to get beginning of the year,
DateTime.new(2019,1,1,0,0,0)
Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000
This resultant value, is passed as part of an object to,
Class:Machinist::ActiveRecord::Blueprint where the reload happens.
def reload(options = nil)
clear_aggregation_cache
clear_association_cache
self.class.connection.clear_query_cache
fresh_object =
if options && options[:lock]
self.class.unscoped { self.class.lock(options[:lock]).find(id) }
else
self.class.unscoped { self.class.find(id) }
end
#attributes = fresh_object.instance_variable_get('#attributes')
#new_record = false
self
end
The instance_variable_get method at,
#attributes = fresh_object.instance_variable_get('#attributes')
switches the time zone on Rails 4.2.8 to local(Mon, 31st Dec 2018 16:00:00 -0800) but not on 4.2.7 where just the time zone is switched and not the time (Tue, 1st Jan 2019 00:00:00 -0800). A similar method, Time.new() has got no problem with this as the time zone is set to local by default,
Time.new(2019,1,1,0,0,0)
2019-01-01 00:00:00 -0800
Trying to pinpoint what changed on rails 4.2.8 that doesn't let the time zones persist to UTC for the DateTime method on the reload.
Any insights on this are helpful.
Thanks