Thanks very much. A lot of good advice for me to ponder on.
I was also a Lone Star addict in my early years, and had all of the items you describe including the station, signal box and level crossing. In fact, I may still have it all in a box up in the loft.
My track was always as big a junction station as I could produce from the points and crossings I owned, and when a schoolmate offered to sell me his collection for about 2/6d (a lot of money in those days, but then he had a lot of track and had tried to model Sleaford West Junction) I ended up with enough to stretch half way around the living room. I had no realism in the ends of the track work - trains were just pushed off the end onto the carpet and were picked up and made ready to appear anywhere as a completely different service.
Later I painted the US single ended diesel blue, with a full yellow end, and the US carriages became blue and 'grey' (actually white, as that was the only pale colour I had) once the newly painted Mk1s started appearing on the real railway.
Sometimes, I would get bored with locomotives and just ran my highly sacrilegious SR third rail scenario, using the carriages as EMUs and guards vans as tram engines pulling occasional goods trains. East Croydon it was certainly not.
I spent hours and hours with this, much to the annoyance of my mother who thought I should be outside playing cowboys and indians like other kids; but I was not at all enthusiastic about pretending to kill people.