Another Grade Crossing Installation


D&J RailRoad

Professor of HO
As mentioned over in the RPO thread, I'll start a thread here for this grade crossing.

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This oil facility has a busy right of way in front of it. Many times operations are interrupted by the rail traffic which might block the access to their yard.
A new road will be paved to cross the three tracks and cross bucks with lights and gates will be installed.
Once again the choice for this project is Tomar gates and signal heads and Rail Logic Technologies for the sensors, servos and boards.
 
Cut out a section of the benchwork to provide a easy ramp up to the grade crossing from the refinery.
Marked out where the road would cross the tracks at an angle.
I'll have to go to the local Hobby Lobby to get a roll of painted highway tomorrow. I know I had some around here but its gone hiding now.

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Applied another layer of road to the grade crossing. Still looking very roughed in. It'll get better once the road surface is built up to the track level.
I'm thinking of leaving the first road there and just put up some "Road Closed" signs at each end of it then cover it with grass and weeds.

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Signals are installed with control wires. I'll have to increase the resistor value of the lamps to about 8xx ohms.

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Mounted two of the control boards under the bench surface to get started and ran a power supply wire to the main board.
The hard part is mounting the servo motors for the gates and attaching the gate control wire. It's a very narrow space in there and I need to be able to reach both hands in there.

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Got one gate control wire attached to the gate arm and cut to length for the servo motor. Programmed the motion of the servo. I'll get the second servo setup later as the total throw is already established.
Now I'm routing the wiring.

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Well, I screwed that up. I installed an emitter and detector so I could run the board and adjust the gate servo. I forgot to install the 68ohm resistor and soon smelled the burning electronics. I'm not sure if I only destroyed the emitter or the entire board.
Waiting on a reply from Logic Rails on how to test the board for damage. Also, they are completely out of replacement emitters. I'll need to find out if it was a special design or if it can be replaced with any emitter.
 
Well, I screwed that up. I installed an emitter and detector so I could run the board and adjust the gate servo. I forgot to install the 68ohm resistor and soon smelled the burning electronics. I'm not sure if I only destroyed the emitter or the entire board.
Waiting on a reply from Logic Rails on how to test the board for damage. Also, they are completely out of replacement emitters. I'll need to find out if it was a special design or if it can be replaced with any emitter.
Well, krappoonenschitzen! 💩
 
I originally tried to use gates at one crossing, but had so much trouble locating the servomechanisms because of the location of the support structure, I finally gave up and went to plain flashers alone. At other crossings, I just went with flashers for the same reason. Neglected to observe the P5th rules when I built my layout. (P5th = Prior Planning Prevents a P$$poor Performance).
 
I agree on the abandoned road idea, definitely unique! For my upcoming new layout, I plan to use Walthers Crossing Signal Controller for my crossings. It'll be a DC layout, so this works perfect. However, I have heard that the controller only works on DC layouts.
 



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