Double railroad crossing gates

[John S]

Figured I’d start a thread about the railroad crossing project done at the home and garden show. Started as single crossing and converted to double this morning.

Motor and working can be hidden in a building or control box on the next baseplate.

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[John S]

Josh shared the almost completed v2 on fb. We managed to get a Power functions motor running off the 9v train track that’s it’s installed on.

Definitely a fun project to get done, especially just using the parts available in the random bin.

Completed by @joshhall, @rcgrier3406 and myself. And thanks to @carlsonf for starting to sort that giant bin! Helped us find some useful parts to make it work!

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[Bob Grier]

Couple more photos and another video of version 2.0. The crossing arms are raised using string (official LEGO string I might add) looped over a couple of pullies and connected to a motor driven spindle, and then lowered (by gravity) by releasing tension on the string. The motor is actuated using a Power Functions dual direction remote.

Josh was able figure out how to power this directly off of the 9v tracks so it can be placed anywhere in the layout, and John was able to gear the motor down to get the very realistic speed of the crossing arms going up and coming down!!

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[Josh]

I didn’t know you posted this thread until this morning! awesome. your gear work was perfect!

I haven’t posted to eurobricks yet to figure out why:
1) it loses power when we disconnect the battery in the 9v train transformer->adapter->battery->sensor/motor configuration. What does the battery box (without batteries) do functionally in that arrangement?
2) why do we get degraded train performance and no motor functionality in one transformer position (clockwise) but expected performance and functionality on counter clockwise?

Thanks for doing inspriring design, Bob and the bulk of the functional work, John! we’ve got something that, from what I can tell, has never been done in the world! Certainly so elegantly with purist boundaries!

[Tim]

That looks really nice. Do the gates stay up until a train is coming or does it just randomly raise and lower?

I think I saw a group in Europe who had a gate which was attached to a sensor which would trigger the lowering when a train would go by.

[Josh]

it’s remote controlled. no sensor.

[Dan]

Really cool! The RCX light sensor worked great for train detection (that’s how my monorail automated block control worked). Is there a similar sensor for Power Functions/Powered Up?

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