Road crossings

[Dennis44236]

I have all Bachman E-Z Track on my layout. I have several Bachman Crossing Gates where a road crosses a single track. I am looking for a double track crossing gate where a road crosses two close tracks. Bachman does not make a double. Any suggestions?

[Jim Banner]

It might be possible to link two sets of crossing gates together so that each mechanism would lower and raise both outside gates (the gates NOT between the two tracks.)

Another approach would be to animate a pair of Bachmann's manual gates using one or two Tortoise motors to move them up and down and train detector on each track to operate the Tortoise motor(s).  If you use cabooses or FRED cars fitted with conductive axles at the rear of your trains, the occupancy detection sections need be only half a train length long each side of the gates.  Then the gates will drop when a train gets to within half a train length and rise again after the train has passed.  Alternately, you can make occupancy detection sections a full train length long and eliminate conductive axles on your rear end cars.  The gates will drop a little sooner but will rise about immediately after the train clears the crossing (very prototypical.)  You can even go a step further and add flashing lights and/or a gong.

Jim