Level Crossing Rebuilding

As part of the new track installation, the intention is to have the gates of the level crossing driven by servo motors, and a rough prototype was  constructed to test this:

The next stage was to work out how fix the level crossing, gates, servos and rails on a removable plate, as the mechanics are far too complex to work on under the layout…

A suitable hole was cut in the baseboard:

This double sided glass fibre board has the rails soldered on, and will have the gates mounted on top, with the servos underneath.
Plastic card will cover most of this and make it look more like a road:

The main tracks were then soldered to fixed copper strips each side of the level crossing board, keeping the alignment with the removable part correct.
The covers nicely hide the soldering!

Once this track was in place, new track could be laid towards the Country Station – this has not yet been fixed down:
And track laid (but not fixed down) for the halt platforms:
The track at the town end of the platforms still needs to be joined to the rest of the layout – a project for later.