"Michael Valinis" <valinis.1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote
>I would like to build a few telltales as warnings at tunnel approaches
> on my layout. Now comes the (I hope not too dumb) question. What is
> the hanging part of the telltale made of?
The ones in my town looked to be made of something like 3/8" or 1/2"
hempen
ropes spaced about 8" or 10" apart, with a knot tied near each lower end
to
prevent the rope from unraveling. Since ours had been hanging there ever
since God first made dirt, the ropes were frayed, ratty looking, and were
absolutely filthy from the steam engine exhaust that blasted up onto them
each time a train passed. Dirty gray-black would be a good color; and
darker
towards the parts where the smokestack passed directly beneath them.
On the Southern Pacific at least, the wooden gibbets that sup****ted the
ropes were painted the same Tuscan red that S.P. used on most of their
freight cars and cabeese, but for some reason they were painted white from
ground level up to about 4' high. (Night time visibility?)
Those sup****t beams looked to be around 10"x10" in cross-section, but I'm
working on a 50-year-old memory here...
> Pictures of model telltales
> that I have seen are ambiguous at best, and the few prototype photos
> I've seen are so blurry and distant that they are useless for my
> purposes. I would think that lengths of rope would be the most
> logical material, but I thought I'd ask before doing something very
> unrealistic. Thanks in advance for any replies.
Believe it or not, telltales are difficult to model realistically. The
frames are a snap, but if you use thread to duplicate the dangling ropes,
it
always seems to want to hang in a slight curve rather than extending
straight down as did the prototypes, and if you use wire instead it ends
up
looking like, well, wire.
Should you find an easy solution to this problem you will no doubt be
awarded the plaudits of a grateful newsgroup.
-Pete
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