Greetings! I am building a 210 foot (HO) scale Warren Bridge for our model railroad club layout. The club uses code 100 Atlas track. The bridge will be straight - no curves. I don’t have a specific prototype; I’m combining the look of several bridges. However, just like the railroad companies, I’m concerned about derailments and damage to the bridge, so I think it makes sense to incorporate guard rails.
My questions are:
Does anyone know of a manufacturer who sells straight track with guard rails in code 100?
If I have to build the guard rails myself, how do I go about it?
I think I read somewhere that guard rails could (or should?) be a different gauge than the main rail? Should I use something like Code 83 or Code 75 for the guard rails?
How close to the main tracks do I place the guard rails for the guard rail to be effective? Is there a standard separation distance for this?
Thanks in advance for your help. I tried to search the forums, but couldn’t find anything specific about the “how to’s.”
While this is not answering your question directly, perhaps you could use Micro Engineering’s or Walther’s Code 83 bridge track and then transition joiners on each end of the bridge.
While I agree that having guard rails on a model bridge increases the realism and look big time, I don’t think that it helps in preventing derailing or the trains falling off the bridge. The physics aren’t quite the same on our scaled down models.
On my layout I just spiked rail against the molded “spikes” on the flex track. The Walthers track is a better way to go. The guard rails were not to prevent derailments but to keep derailed trucks pointed in the general direction of the track and allow the truck wheels to ride the ties until clear of the bridge.
I would buy a section of Code 83 flex-track and pull the rail out of the ties and do as nedthomas said glue or spike it next to the molded spikes on the code 100 flex track,
but before you attach it use needle nose pliars and bend and shape the ends together.
According to Paul Mallery’s “Trackwork Handbook for Model Railroaders” the proto type RRs laid the guard rail 8 to 18 inches inside the running rail. They did use smaller sized or salvaged from worn out service rails. You are aware that they were “veed” toward the center of the track at the end to catch the already on the ground truck and thus steering it toward the center of the bridge to prevent the car from taking out the bridge.
Once you have shaped the rails they could be glued in place with a contact cement, thus avoiding the spiking the rail to the plastic ties.
Keep the ends of the “vees” seperated to avoid any possible electrical shorting to the running rails.
Good luck and post pictures of the finished product
I’ve got a couple of Atlas Warren truss bridges. They have guard rails. To me , it looks like they are just square cross-section plastic, and they look fine to my old eyes. You could just go out and get some Evergreen styrene strips and paint them flat black. Glue them on, and V in the ends. If you’re really making a quality model that is right out in front where it will get a lot of attention, though, I’d go with some code 83 rails. Rust 'em, maybe?
One word of caution: If you create the “V” at the ends, keep one side insulated from the other. Otherwise you might create a short even without any metal wheels derailing.