I need an HO scale track bumper for my stub end yard that looks like what’s found on modern railroads. Any suggestions?
These are the plastic Walthers ones:
They’re plastic, and come in a package of 12 for around that many dollars.
Interesting to note that the Walthers bumpers are not in stock at Walthers!
If you want to be unique and waste some space, you could do what the Buffalo & Pittsburgh did here:
I’m reasonably sure they don’t have trucks or couplers.
I can’t find it now but a simple bump stop can be made using a nail with a washer soldered to the head. Then bent at a 90 dig angel just below the head, then a V shaped piece of whatever to form the other two legs of the bump stop. Lastly paint the whole thing yellow.
Note: Lastly if you use some kind of metal gap your rails between the stop and the rest of your layout or you’ll have a short.
Found it. Track Bumpers Once painted they look good.
mound of dirt:
Many choices in the prototype AND model world. In the real world, the robustness of the solution usualyl depends on just how bad it would be if a car ran off the end of the track. Everythign from simple wheel stops to massive concrete bits to big mounds of dirt to, as seen above, old freight cars are used.
Two types are commercially available, the Walthers ones and the Atlas ones. Others are DIY projects. It probably looks best to use different types as the situation dictates, like the prototype, rather than have say a Walthers one on every single siding.
–Randyu
What can you as CEO of your layout afford?? Piles of dirt and gravel, or expensive steel barriers??
These are the same choices real railroad managers need to make.
It’s all about budget!!
I have seen railroad ties piled up at the end of the spur tracks around. MAke either a solid block of them or a pyramid of them.
I have also seon the piled up dirt, which I asume under it is ballast gravel for substantiation.
Simple, to the point and apparently works.
I assume they are tied down to each other and to the ground somehow. AMybe not as it would stop a car, but not damage it?