Indoor Test of Grade Crossing Signals

I decided to test the newly wired grade crossing signals for our small garden railroad here on our living room coffee table.  This way, if I happened to encounter a problem, I could figure out what is wrong without all the variables of installing it outdoors.  Doing this test in a controlled environment is the best option.

I have a few circuit boards in this configuration that I should explain...

First, the power is sourced from four AA rechargeable batteries in the black case pictured at right.  

From there, the power goes to a voltage regulator.  I need the voltage to be a steady 3.0 volts for the new LED bulbs in the grade crossing signals.  This voltage regulator can be set to a wide range of output voltages but I need 3.0 volts so that is what I set it to. 

The output terminals on the regulator circuit board run to a large momentary push button switch.  The kids can easily access this big button and hold it down to keep the grade crossing signals illuminated as the train passes.

When the big red momentary switch is held down, the power then runs to the two flasher circuit boards.  Each of these circuit boards is connected to its own grade crossing signal.  This allows the illuminated lights to alternate from one side of the signal to the other, back and forth until the circuit is turned off (letting go of the momentary push button).

Here is a short video showing this little electronic project in action...

While looking at this video, I noticed that the paint scheme didn't look right on the signals.  I checked online and I was right.  I need to pull out the black paint for the large circular frames around each of the lights.  That should take me about five minutes per coat.  I'll probably need only two coats though.

I plan to put all the electronics inside watertight food storage container.  I'll still need fairly easy access to this container so I can turn on the battery pack plus I'll need access to remove the batteries for charging every now and then...  how I am going to arrange all of this is still a bit fuzzy in my head though.  I guess as long as the wires are long enough, I can pull the container out from under the track platform, open the container, turn on the battery pack or remove batteries, then place it back under the track platform, out of sight.  I think this will work.