Train level crossing using 2021 road plates

Question

I'm interested in integrating a train level crossing into a city layout using the new road plates, but I've been struggling to figure out the best way to do this. Here's an example level crossing for reference (7936):

The space between the rails is built up using a plate and a tile to make it even with the rails and 3 plates higher than the surface. Ramps are then used to bring cars up to this level. That works well enough, and it can be used with the previous road baseplates if everything is built on a baseplate, but things are trickier with the new road plates:

These are exactly 2 plates tall, which is why I'm struggling to figure out how to best use them for a level crossing. Here's my naive attempt:

That's not terrible, but the rails are one plate higher than the surface of the road, which certainly isn't ideal. I could obviously raise all the roads up by a plate, but that also seems a bit annoying for a large layout given that all of the City sets expect the road plates to be sitting directly on a table.

I've tried using curve slopes such as 71771:

However for the height to work out the front lip of the slope has to be sitting 1/2 plate below the surface of the road, which also doesn't look great:

This seems like a common use case that TLG would have considered, especially given that they'll likely create a level crossing set at some point using this new system. Am I missing an obvious way to make this work? What is the simplest way to create a flush level crossing using the new road plates?

Answer 1

It occurred to me that you could use 8-stud-long tiles, tilted ~3 degrees, resting on plates at different heights.

Side view from a quick LeoCAD mock-up:

Since clipping the tile to plates at different heights might stress the tile, I suggest to place it resting on top of tiles at different heights.

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Edit: After several iterations, I think the ramp should be better made out of 2x4 tiles, resting on top of tiles at the railtrack side, and free-standing at the roadplate side, like so:

That's trivially built with 1x4 tiles, 4x8 plates and 1x8 plates.

There are variations of this kind of ramp, depending on the parts available. For example, the following uses 15068 2x2 Slope, curved instead of tiles. I'm assuming the slope would help the ramp to slide in place a bit better, plus the 2x2 plates help the ramp to not slide alongside the track:

Note, in the image above, how the tiniest bit of yellow plate is visible to the right of the blue slope - that means the assembly is so slightly over 8 studs long (when tilted), which makes it pretty much impossible to use hinges for the ramp.

A similar anti-slide arrangement can be made roadside. I suggest using 32028 1x2 plate with door rail, on both sides of a 1x10 plate, with tiles on top, like so:

I guess that could be easily replaced with "1x1 plate with teeth".

Answer 2

Since the lips of slope bricks rest half a plate below the two-plate-thick roadplates, a solution might be.... to elevate the whole track by half a plate. This can be done with baseplates:

Of course, this assumes that your train tracks will be elevated by one baseplate all around. But that's OK because we've learned from sets 4539-1 and 10128-1 that it's meant to be done that way, right? Right?

And there's the problem of aligning/attaching the baseplate to the roadplate.

Luckily, we can use the SNOT techniques described at https://forum.brickset.com/discussion/26463/plate-versus-baseplate-height-how-to-align-them , and disguise the connector as the support for a barrier:

Answer 3

There's now an "official" answer to this question thanks to the summer 2022 Train Station (60335):

This set includes a level crossing that is built as follows:

This doesn't make use of any novel elements, and the part used to create the ramp up to the tracks is 88930 Slope Brick Curved 2 x 4 x 2/3:

While this is a somewhat different approach than the larger ramps used in my question, the same basic issue is still present with a half-plate high bump in road:

Overall, I think the look works alright. The choice to transition to light gray at the crossing to make it clear that there are different materials in play helps to remove the expectation that there would be a clean and flush interface at that point.

Answer 4

I would try and use part 15068 Slope Curved 2x2 to go from road to track. Have you tried this?

Edit: upon closer inspection, I think this gives the same result as your ramps, just with a shorter slope, so this might not be a useful suggestion.