Micron Art Z1055
Railroad Crossing Signals

These Z scale railroad crossing signals come as a sheet of photo etched brass (1.5 x 1 inch) and a little bag with brass posts and red Swarovsky crystals (for the lights). You might also notice a brass ladder in the bag. I have no idea what that's for! It wasn't shown on the instruction sheet.

I painted each item before assembly with the colors described on the instruction sheet. Then, when I began to assemble the signals, I found that the poles, painted white, were too big around now to fit through the holes designed for them in the crossing signs, lights and the control box. So I scraped off the white paint with my X-acto knife. Even then, some of the holes in the control boxes were too small, so I enlarged them with the tip of my X-acto knife.

I put a tiny drop of Maxi-Cure glue into each small hole of the crossing light assemblies. The Swarovsky crystals were too small to pick up with my fingers, and extremely difficulty to hold with tweezers, so I moistened the tip of my smallest paint brush and used it to pick up each crystal. Each was placed into position in the glue on the assembly. Sometimes. If the crystal didn't settle into it's proper place, I nudged it into position with the tip of a pin.

Each Swarovsky crystal "light" was supposed to be covered by bending the end of the assembly around so that the larger opening at each end covered it. But after trying one like that, I decided to leave the lights exposed so that they would be more visible.

The directions suggested that the raised letters on the crossing signs be darkened with a pencil, but, although they were raised, they were not raised enough for the lead pencil to darken them properly. I ended up repainting the signs.

I couldn't get the control boxes to fold closed with the edges meeting properly. So I used a little white paint to fill in the cracks and then repainted the entire box with silver paint.