In the back, you can see the castle. This forms the centerpiece for the amusement area at the rear of the layout.
The angled base of the castle is made from a bunch of old 4.5V railroad ties.
The original castle started life about 10 years ago, but has been renovated extensively since then. The original keep was wider, but not as deep or tall. The current version has a solid floor across the whole structure on the third story. The super-structure sits in the middle of this while the curtain wall and tower continue around the sides.
At the top of the castle is a working windmill and bell tower. Using some Technic gears and chains, the bell actually swings back and forth as the windmill runs. As you can see, the tower is very filamentary and cannot support motors or much in the way of gears. Therefore, all the motors and gears are housed in the dark-gray and red areas below. Two chains snake upwards to the highest tower. The outer one delivers a constant rotation motion to the windmill. The inner one turns about 1/4 turn, reverses, and then goes 1/4 turn back to drive the bell. The sequence then repeats itself. The entire motion is mechanical rather than electronic.
To the left of the castle is the knights tournament.
I've always been fascinated by fighting knights. The original version just had two static knights. I wanted to mechanize the display, but the technique I used for the bell tower did not provide enough back-and-forth motion for this model. Luckily, LEGO came out with Mindstorms last year and this proved just the ticket. Each knight rides on a rail covered with 4-pole Technic toothed pieces. In the center are two counter-rotating gears driven by a standard Technic motor. At the back end of one of the knights is a touch sensor. An RCX controls the whole thing. The program begins by making the knights go away from each other until the touch sensor is hit. Then a random delay occurs. Next, the knights move forward for a semi-random period of time (they are never allowed to touch). Then the whole process repeats itself.
On the far left, by the bed, you can see some cables going under the tracks and a black brick mounted to the rails. Inside this brick, I used a white block to reflect an RCX light sensor. Since the train is black at that height, the sensor gets tripped when the train goes through it. Whenever the sensor is tripped, the RCX makes some noises. I had hoped to hook this to a crossing-gate, but could never make one that worked reliably enough.
To the right of the picture, you can see a pirate ship. This is a built-up version of the original LEGO pirate ship with extra cannons, an extra story, and a life-boat.
To the bottom-right of the picture is the Eiffel Tower.