The Carolina Sandhills Lines in HO Scale

[Philip H]

https://www.amazon.com/CUSTOM-MUSTANG-Vehicle-Acrylic-Display/dp/B003LAFU0Q

[davefoxx]

https://www.amazon.com/CUSTOM-MUSTANG-Vehicle-Acrylic-Display/dp/B003LAFU0Q

Neat!  But, did you see the price of that Mustang?  $39.99 + $4.99 shipping.  Yowza!

In the meantime, I have my blue first generation Mustang.



DFF

[davefoxx]

I knew this would get messy, so, while I can manhandle the bridge a little more before the delicate railings go on, I “planted” it in a foundation of lightweight spackling last night.



Tonight, I carefully cut around the bridge to free it from the layout.  I had to do a lot of sanding to remove the excess spackling from the bridge and gave it a dip under the laundry tub faucet to remove the dust (the picture above is after the bridge was cleaned up).  The bridge will remain removable until it is finished, painted, and weathered, so I can also repair and detail the scenery around the bridge without messing up the bridge further.  It will also be much easier to work on those railings at the workbench.



DFF

[davefoxx]

I built the first section of railing.  This consists of eleven pieces of styrene per section, and I need to build eleven more sections.  This wasn’t my idea of fun, working with small pieces of styrene that were too large to cut cleanly with The Chopper.  For this reason, I wasn’t able to come up with a good way to mass produce consistent-sized pieces.  This might take a while. 



DFF

[Dave V]

Looks great though.

[wazzou]

That does look really good Dave.  One section every night.

[muktown128]

Arm photon printers and 3D print?

Seriously, that railing looks really good.

[Philip H]

I built the first section of railing.  This consists of eleven pieces of styrene per section, and I need to build eleven more sections.  This wasn’t my idea of fun, working with small pieces of styrene that were too large to cut cleanly with The Chopper.  For this reason, I wasn’t able to come up with a good way to mass produce consistent-sized pieces.  This might take a while. 



DFF

Silicon mold and casting in resin.

[C855B]

I built the first section of railing.  This consists of eleven pieces of styrene per section, and I need to build eleven more sections.  This wasn’t my idea of fun, working with small pieces of styrene that were too large to cut cleanly with The Chopper.  For this reason, I wasn’t able to come up with a good way to mass produce consistent-sized pieces.  This might take a while. 

Looks like a weathering opportunity to me. You've managed a pretty accurate representation of a style of cast concrete guardrails that are a relic of WPA infrastructure construction; that is, 1930s through maybe the early '50s.

By your modeling era and region, they'd have deteriorated to the point of significant spalling if not shedding small chunks, especially at corners, and there'd be spots where rebar would be exposed. A few I've seen in the past couple of decades might have 3-5' hunks of concrete missing from the rails, nothing left other than the rebar 'tween you and the abyss. If the bridge capacity was not otherwise impaired, in those instances the DOT would typically drop a couple of sections of K-wall to "protect" the missing portions while they whined and groveled about bridge replacement funding. 

[Bob]

How are you cutting the styrene, Dave?  I know that size is too big to cut cleanly with the Chopper - do you have some kind of clever technique, particularly for the angled pieces at the bottom? They look quite consistent in size.  Bob

[CRL]

The only way I see to simplify this is to use a continuous horizontal piece of styrene, then add posts of same size to the bottom & top, then a thin piece to sides at each post to give the look of a thicker post. Sand to blend the joints.

Build an assembly jig to speed things up.

But take this with a grain of salt given my struggles with installing slide out kitchen pot racks.

[Steveruger45]

The only way I see to simplify this is to use a continuous horizontal piece of styrene, then add posts of same size to the bottom & top, then a thin piece to sides at each post to give the look of a thicker post. Sand to blend the joints.

Build an assembly jig to speed things up.

But take this with a grain of salt given my struggles with installing slide out kitchen pot racks.

I was thinking more or less the same thing.  But that way is also a lot of faffing.  Then I thought drilling a square hole in the verticals and sliding in continuous rails.  Then I thought naa, if I don’t have a square drill I’d have to get one and would it cut cleanly?, so I end up with all these considerations with what Dave is doing and just pack the patience.

[wm3798]

Seems like a no brainer for a 3 d printer...  design a pretty simple 3D section, then poop them out in quantity!
Would probably find a market for them.
Lee

[Chris333]

If you could draw up a sketch with dimensions I could print them.

[davefoxx]

How are you cutting the styrene, Dave?  I know that size is too big to cut cleanly with the Chopper - do you have some kind of clever technique, particularly for the angled pieces at the bottom? They look quite consistent in size.  Bob

Honestly, I set up a cutting board with pieces of Masonite and taped down the angle gauges from The Chopper to allow me to cut the pieces with a razor saw and then do a little filing and sanding.

If you look carefully, you’ll see that the horizontal rails are not in the same plane as the posts (presumably to keep allow cars to slide along the rail instead of coming to a quick stop by catching a post), in addition to the posts being taller than the rails.  This creates a number of facets that make it difficult to come up with a quick and simple jig.  It’s also why each section requires eleven pieces of styrene.  I cheat and glue the rails flush with the posts and then add a thin strip of styrene that runs the whole length of the section, to model that projection and to strengthen the section.  Maybe I’ll take pictures during the progress of the next section.



I like your suggestions for cast resin and 3D printing, but wouldn’t that be cheating?  I want to call this project scratchbuilding (I’ll admit that I stole the I-beams from a RIX kit, though).  I’ve never cast in resin before, and I’m too lazy to try to learn how to do that now, especially after I dropped a little bit of coin on scratchbuilding materials.  @Chris333, I may take you up on your offer to print them, if I can’t keep the quality at a level that satisfies me.  But, be forewarned that the sections are not all the same.  I figure that there will eight of the style I built yesterday and two each of the end sections.  Stay tuned.

Thanks so much, all!
DFF