Starting the grade crossing scene

I showed this reference photo in one of my first posts, Streets and Buildings.   This scene was just outside the station and is an important scene on the module that I wanted to re-create.

This is old Green Max kit number 45 and this is what I used to create the grade crossing.  I purchased a couple of these kits in Japan but they are also available on ebay.  The new number for this kit is 2153.

Besides the pair of crossing signals and gates this kit includes road sections, train signals, sensors, and other details.  I did not use the road sections as I had already built up the roads.

The bases for the crossing gates were meant to sit at below track level and because I had already built up the roads and surrounding area the gates seemed abnormally high when compared to people.  So I cut out sections in the cork as shown in this photo to lower the bases.

The edges of the now sunken bases were built up with .020 x .040 styrene strip.  Then after gluing the base in place I patched up the road surface around it.  Some of the road striping will also need to be redone.

I modified the gate arm assembly by drilling a hole in the arm pivot point.  Another hole was drilled through the motor mount and tapped for a 00-90 screw to secure the arm to the mount.  An extra Micro-Trains screw was used for this. Doing this allows the arm to be moved between the lowered and raised positions.

The tiny ridges on the gate arms were handy as a guide for hand painting of the yellow stripes.  The striping on the barrier is from a Kato sticker set.

Now this seems better.

So far just using the basic gates and signals from one kit at one crossing.  There are also other signals that can be added and there is still the larger grade crossing on the 2M extension module to do.