Emsingen railroad crossing (part 4)

It's coming together.

I spent a good part of the day to add tension wires ("Spannseile") to the crossing gates. I carefully drilled holes in the crossing gate beam for the wire support.

I glued Berkshire Junction E Z Wire into additional holes.

Next I glued the wire lines to the wire support. It takes some patience and steady hands to make this work. To make my life easier, I used the base plates from the kit to hold the crossing gates while I fiddled with E Z Line and glue.

There. One down, one more to go. I actually built both gates in parallel and switched back and forth while the glue dried, which optimized the build time substantially.

Since the crossing gates are somewhat delicate, I decided to finish the remaining major work items in the area around the crossing: Ballast the track, install turnout lanterns, install street lights, guard rails, wire ducts, ground cover, weeds, some bushes, etc.

The last Emsingen turnout to be ballasted

The intro photo above shows the current state with many details still missing. I hope to get most of that completed tomorrow.