I recently picked up an Arduino along with a copy of Getting Started in Electonics by Forrest M. Mims III with the intention of using it to build my own animation controller for my crossing gates.
I actually got the MAKE Getting Started with Arduino Kit
Which opened up contained these goodies:
After some reading and playing around I managed to get the light flasher portion created. I still have to design the logic around activating them and actuating a tortoise which will be used for the moving the arms up and down. In the mean time I have a picture of preliminary flasher circuit on the breadboard as well as a very short video showing them flashing.
And the video:
Matt's Railroad Blog 