Simple projects: Adding Guardrails

One of my purchases at the January train show in Springfield was the book Model Railroading with George Dutka. George has several blogs on various New England themed railroad subjects (links to his blogs are on the right of my own) and I always enjoy his postings. So, when I saw that he had a new publication for sale at the show I had to buy it. I also got a chance to talk with him, which might have been the real reason I bought the book!

Over the past three months I have been savoring it, reading little bits before bed. Needless to say, it is chock-full of useful modeling projects for all builders but I especially enjoy that all the pictures show New England railroads. It makes me wish I was freelancing my layout (my next layout will be) so that I could encorporate more of his structure kitbashing and rolling stock modeling ideas. 

However, I was able to glean at least three ideas for my current layout. One of them is guardrails. I have a dead end road on part of my layout adjacent to the of Albany Terminal Warehouse and wondered what to do with it. Rix Products makes guardrail kits, but somehow I never knew about them until I read the book. Well, I quckly ran to the computer and ordered a set online.

It's a pretty simple kit and it comes with enough parts to make several smaller guardrails or one longer one such as might be found along the side of a highway. The instructions explain the process for putting it together in its various iterations, but the parts schematic was a little fuzzy. It isn't impossible to figure out, and the small number of total parts helps, but it could have been a bit clearer.

I cut out one middle piece and one extension piece (actually, I first cut out two extension pieces because I mis-read the diagram) and glued them together, The guardrail's curved end things were attached next, though they first had to have some flash removed. Finally, three legs were cut out and installed. It went together quickly but the soft styrene didn't really want to stay straight. For my location it was fine if it looked like it had been hit by a truck once or twice, but for a brand new highway installation it might have been more problematic.

Next, it was painted silver, drybrushed light gray to give it an oxidized and chalky appearance, drubrushed with with dirt and rust colored acrylics and sprayed with Dullcoate. Finally, three holes were drilled into the layout and it was glued in place with white glue. Ground foam and dirt finished the job. Some random junk could probably get dumped in the area too, but I am happy with it right now.

All told, not including the drying time it was probably a 30 minute project. I have never had a layout go so far into the "scenery phase" before such that I could spend time and money on small details like this, and I enjoyed it a lot. And, I have more guardrails left over which I can use for future projects.