Guardrails for roads, looking for ideas.

Art, if I was going to do it I would drill holes so I could string wire through them. So many now are galvanized steel post. When I was younger I remember seeing round and square posts  some with wire attached to the front of them and others with the wire going through them. If you have extra material try some different examples to see what you like best.............Paul

Hi Art, I know from 25 years of road service that all post for a guard rail must be blunt/ flat on top to reduce injury if a car happen to end up on top of the post. In general if we were putting up a 20' section of rail the post would be6' 3" spacing. The bottom of the rail should be no more then 31" high off the ground.

For wooden posts...this is what I did on the old layout. Wooden guide posts are still in existence today but were certainly more prominent back in the 50's and 60's.

I would use a 6" to 8" diameter wood dowel (scale 1/8" - 3/16" dia).

Space them at 4' intervals on a curve (1" scale) and 8 to 10 feet on a straightaway (2" scale).

To look cool, I would run some stranded wire between them (4 to 8 strands) and then anchor the cable in the ground at each end.

Make them 3 to 4 feet tall (1"scale) and paint the top 2/3 a reflective white and the bottom 1/3 black.

Finally, provide a bevel on the top (one direction only).

Hope that helps with a wooden guide rail system.

Donald

Instead of drilling holes, I made little u-bolts or eye-bolts from thin wire.  Another hint is to glue down the posts onto a sheet of foam core on your bench, rather than on the layout:

Finally made a decision on my guardrails and have started constructing them.  I am using 3/16" dowel rod, painting them white with a black band on the lower third, and spacing them 1 1/2" apart.  The posts are 3/4" above the base or a scale three feet high.  I am also putting them on strips of 1/8" Masonite cut 1/2" wide and will then transfer these strips to the layout.  It is much easier to drill the holes and paint the posts at the workbench than on the layout as has been suggested.  I think that I can be satisfied without adding cable to the posts which will save a lot of work and what little hair I have left on my head. 

Thanks for all the great suggestions and advice.

Art

       Hello Art.

       I too wanted the old black and white posts I remember from long ago.

       I remember as a kid climbing and sitting on them. Ours, in Wisconsin were round on top.

       I went with 3/16" dowel and painted them half black, half white. Spacing was, that looks good enough for me. I drilled small holes in the bottom and super glued a cutoff pin in the bottom. My scenery here is static grass with pink foam underneath so I could just push them in wherever.

                                                                                            Dan

Dan, that is exactly the look I am going for also.  I haven't rounded the tops or painted the tops black, but I may have to.  It would be easy to paint the tops black, but forget rounding the tops.  Great scenes!  Highway signs are spot on which adds a lot of realism to it.

Art

Chugman posted:

I am looking for pictures of real ones for ideas on height and diameter of the posts, spacing, and with or without cables. Do they have to be pointed or slanted on top for drainage to look right?t

Here you go!  Black Locust posts, slight bevel on top, painted white, 2 eye bolts through threaded with braided steel cable.  Wait 30 years, dig up, invert and re-install metal parts.

mwb posted

Here you go!  Black Locust posts, slight bevel on top, painted white, 2 eye bolts through threaded with braided steel cable.  Wait 30 years, dig up, invert and re-install metal parts.

 

That's the look - "Take Me Home Country Roads".

      Thanks Art, Maybe I'm remembering wrong and they were flat or slightly beveled.

      Perhaps the ones I climbed on were a school parking area or something.

                                                                                                         Dan

They do bring back "old" memories. I used dowels. I cut off track nails and made a small hole in dowel and tapped the nails in. Once I had glued the dowels in the "ground", I wrapped heavy thread around the black track nails from post to post. If you can do it on the work bench rather than the layout - that's the best idea. I did as much of my layout construction that way as I could.

I remember a vacation we took in 1961 where we traveled Highway 61 from Duluth to Port Arthur/Fort Williams which is now Thunder Bay, Ontario.  Along that route we saw some gorgeous scenery from light houses to waterfalls.  It was in late September and it was cold, rainy, and foggy a good share of the way.   I also remember seeing stretches of that road that had guardrails that were wood posts and painted white with black trim.  I have pictures that I took of them somewhere, but haven't found them yet.  they would be Kodachrome slides.

I did run across a post card of a section of the highway near Red Wing, MN that is pretty cool in my opinion.

These posts were painted half white and half black with a single cable.  I have always loved the stark contrast between the white on the posts and the surroundings.  The tops were rounded in this picture.

Art

Turtle,

Living in Bills Country, we've had a few of those Flutie Flakes.

I still have the box of "Flute Flakes"

OGR run277, April/May 2015, John Sethian has a good article on how he did post and cable guard barriers.

Here's how we did 'em in Jersey - I believe these were 6x6 with tops cut at a 30° angle....

Here in WV posts were bevel top, all white. Steel cable was run through the posts and eye bolts in different locations. Dad worked on the roads around home in the 40's and 50's. A few years ago he gave me a 'post marker' they used in the 40's. It a glass disc about 2 inches around. It contained some type, small, of uranium that made it glow at night!!! They were removed not long after being installed.....it would be cool to model this with a strand of fiber optic in the post!! 

mike g. posted:

Hi Art, I know from 25 years of road service that all post for a guard rail must be blunt/ flat on top to reduce injury if a car happen to end up on top of the post. In general if we were putting up a 20' section of rail the post would be6' 3" spacing. The bottom of the rail should be no more then 31" high off the ground.

Attenuators at the end of a guide rail run,  no more turn downs.  ;-) 

I never did post a picture of my finished guardrails on this thread.  As you can see, I did not string cable or round or slant the tops of the posts.  I decided that they were close enough to what I was looking for.

Thanks for all your ideas and pictures.

Art