Alternate sources for "filler" fencing?

[cteno4]

Yeah last night I was thinking about this stuff at scale and grabbed some stryene strip to look at. It's tough to get this stuff close to scale. The etched metal really is the thing to get close to scale and still hold together well.

 

I looked at doing etched metal locally here locally on a lever piece and it was not horrible,mthere is a mask setup fee, but if you rerun that's not there. I've done my own for pc boards and it's fun and not very hard. Biggest work is making and transferring your mask to the metal. In this case it's tricky as you want very fine traces.

 

For the short bits a couple of different railing sets would probably make dozens of different short barrier pieces. Painting different colors would also make them look very different quickly. Put a small stryene strip piece across the top of a few that is like a large bannister rail. Of course a few with some vines growing up or veg at the bottom will also make them appear very different!

 

There are some new kobaru fence bits that could also be chopped up for little barrier fences

 

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10325920

 

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10325919

 

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10295510

 

The casco I've seen short and tall outside station areas where a road or walkway many parallel a track. Yes platz seems to sort of roam all over train modeling and stuff goes oop. It was some of the nicest track barrier stuff I've seen around. Not cheap, but came painted and a fair bit of it.

 

When you really get down to it the structures and detailing of a layout is really where the big cost is! You can scratch build, but that's a big investment in learning and production time then!

 

There is a plastic crochet grid that can be cut up for the squat heavy road guard rails and Is felxible for curves. It's still a bit chunky and needs the top shaved clean but possible. But we are talking 1' thick scale.

 

I wish there was a craft or reuse bit that would do nice n scale rail fencing, I'll certainly keep looking! I'll send you some of the metal mesh ribbon to experiment with as well.

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

[velotrain]

Jeff - I just placed a HS order, but only for stuff in stock.  I noticed that a lot of Kobaru is supposedly coming in late June, but I'm a bit hesitant to do this with HS, since if some of it is late that may split it up into multiple shipments.  I dislike not having total control of the situation.

 

The two smaller guys might be better for this, but I have the sense they'd rather not handle a lot of these small bits and pieces.

 

I may mess around and see what I can do this weekend.

 

Is the plastic crochet grid a craft store item?

[cteno4]

Charles,

 

Yes, these little bits ship for 500 yen usually from HS sal, so I do preorders for odd girls like that on their own and ask for all to ship together. Kobaru usually comes in and a third of the items sell out right away and you wait for a few months for it to be rereleased.

 

I'll pop some of the crochet mesh in the envelope as well.

 

I also just recalled another way of making these style railing from ship modeling days way back! Use thread. String it out in a grid by wrapping a template with some wax paper under it. Then you soak the thread with dilute white glue or dope. This makes it stiff and glues it together. Then clip out the bits.

 

http://www.papershipwright.co.uk/thread-railings-template/

 

You could do this with stanchions of stryene stock like 030. Place a bunch of stanchions in a row and score two notches in one side, one right near the top and the other half way down. Then lay them out on a template with double stick clear tape on it. Then pull the thread across with it in the notches. Bit of ac glue at each notch then paint the thread with diluted glue to stiffen. Lost easier than trying to drill tiny holes!

 

Cheers,

 

Jeff

[tossedman]

Could you scratch build some using stretched spruce?

[velotrain]

Could you scratch build some using stretched spruce?

 

I've never heard of that material.

[cteno4]

LOL! Auto correct!

 

Stretched sprue! It's taking your left over plastic sprues from model kits and heating them and reaching them out to very fine threads of stryene. Great source of fine round and flexible bits for things like railings.

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ6I0lqw2qY

[tossedman]

Jeff's right. I meant stretched sprue.

[cteno4]

Just thinking about it and the thread method would lend itself well to using the stretched sprue material. Would not give you the absolute flattest style but many are stanchions with cross pieces bolted on. For a foot or more you would never notice!

 

Just make a grid printout template, put double stick tape around the edge of the grid and wax paper over the grid. Then drop the sprue bits at the right spots and then dab of ca at each joint (the tedious part). Could make a larger grid and just chop up later with other row a bit wider to make longer legs once snipped off.

 

Jeff

[bill937ca]

Or you could just cut down toothpicks, drill a couple of holes with a pin vise and thread wire through the holes. Start watching at 9:40.