Gwr lineside fencing

Outside the fence.
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steve howe
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Gwr lineside fencing

Postby steve howe » Wed Jun 28, 2017 4:36 pm

Looking to delineate the boundaries on my current plank, the post and wire kit from Ratio seems fairly universal but in my club's experience, the supplied wire is too over scale and difficult to glue to the moulded notches on the posts. Can anyone suggest a really thin gauge wire that would substitute? Ideally a tinned finish would look the part, on several layouts I've seen recently they have'nt bothered with wire at all and I wonder if it's absence is really that noticeable?

Steve

dal-t
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Re: Gwr lineside fencing

Postby dal-t » Wed Jun 28, 2017 4:52 pm

Bit of a circle going on here - have you tried EZline (which I first saw as one of those useful 'odds and ends' at Scaleforum, recommended for telegraph lines and fencing, but have used for the rigging of model aircraft ever since)? I get mine from Little Cars.
David L-T

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Tim V
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Re: Gwr lineside fencing

Postby Tim V » Wed Jun 28, 2017 4:53 pm

1. Note that the suggested gap for the posts is too close, but I've forgotten what it should be!

2. Why bother with the wire? I don't. The wire is about 1/8" diameter - or about 0.041mm - you wouldn't be able to see it. I was disappointed to see that Pendon had put wires on their fence posts - to my eye they looked grossly over scale. Plus it's a maintenance hazard and it collects dust - making it even more overscale. The dust was on the Pendon wires as well.
Tim V
(Not all railways in Somerset went to Dorset)

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David B
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Re: Gwr lineside fencing

Postby David B » Wed Jun 28, 2017 5:03 pm

There are laser cut posts here by Scale Model Shop. I would be inclined to use EZ Line.

martin goodall
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Re: Gwr lineside fencing

Postby martin goodall » Wed Jun 28, 2017 7:18 pm

I have adopted the same approach as Tim V - no wires!

From memory [no time to check], the posts were set out at six-foot intervals, but I once checked this for real and found slight variations, which suggests that the posts were set out 'by eye' (or by pacing out the estimated distance).

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Russ Elliott
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Re: Gwr lineside fencing

Postby Russ Elliott » Wed Jun 28, 2017 7:28 pm

Some nylon lycra threads are very fine, and stretchy. (Or alternatively, use 48SWG enamelled copper wire.)

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steve howe
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Re: Gwr lineside fencing

Postby steve howe » Thu Jun 29, 2017 8:13 am

David B wrote:There are laser cut posts here by Scale Model Shop. I would be inclined to use EZ Line.



Those posts look good except I don't think the wire went through holes, in reality it was stapled to the front of the post. I'm inclined to agree with Tim about the overscale effect of wire, I think the same principle applies to telegraph wires (and Pendon hasn't addressed that issue yet!) I guess you would need a filament about the diameter of a human hair, and I don't think even E-zee line goes that fine.

John Palmer
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Re: Gwr lineside fencing

Postby John Palmer » Thu Jun 29, 2017 10:19 am

Until I researched it I had not realised how thick EZline is. The fine gauge version measures .010" / .25 mm - the equivalent, in 4mm scale of three-quarters of an inch!

Monofilament fishing line can readily be obtained in finer diameters than this. Frog Hair, for example is obtainable from https://www.pecheur.com/en/gb/buy-monofilament-frog-hair-traditional-27038.html with a diameter of .08 mm. However, in 4mm that scales to a quarter inch so is still almost twice scale thickness (1/8" diameter for Southern Railway standard post and wire fencing). I understand that, since Frog Hair is a fluorocarbon filament, it is less susceptible to degradation in sunlight than other monofilaments.

Many years ago I made up a short length (about 8") of post and wire fencing for the Burnham layout, using .1 mm fishing line. The result was quite agreeable, but I was very conscious of its vulnerability and hid most of it behind a length of close-boarded fencing! On an exhibition layout in particular there is much to be said for Tim V's approach.

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steve howe
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Re: Gwr lineside fencing

Postby steve howe » Thu Jun 29, 2017 11:04 am

After a bit of rooting around on Google,
These guys do a 0.04mm (48swg) copper wire which might be useful:


https://www.wires.co.uk/cgi-bin/sh00000 ... 040_2d050m

Steve

dal-t
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Re: Gwr lineside fencing

Postby dal-t » Thu Jun 29, 2017 3:26 pm

John Palmer wrote: The fine gauge version measures .010" / .25 mm - the equivalent, in 4mm scale of three-quarters of an inch!


Yes, but not as soon as you stretch it! A bit of experiment allows you to trade off thickness against tension to produce a range of diameters, and in most situations it's relative not absolute size that matters. I use the 'thick' line for main (flying and landing) wires and the thin for everything else, but when finished an average airframe will seem to have seven or eight different types of wire. You just have to make sure the attachment points are firm enough to take the pull - it really is quite tough stuff and even when 'tight' will still give more if you blunder into it. I know this ... (from repeated unintentional encounters!)
David L-T

garethashenden
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Re: Gwr lineside fencing

Postby garethashenden » Thu Jun 29, 2017 3:49 pm

I've had good luck with EZ Line and (I think) Slaters fence posts. Make sure to drill through the holes before fitting them though!
Last edited by garethashenden on Fri Jun 30, 2017 4:43 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Rod Cameron
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Re: Gwr lineside fencing

Postby Rod Cameron » Thu Jun 29, 2017 4:35 pm

To have or have not (wires) is one of those issues we get from time to time when scaling down and there's a disjoint. We know it should be there, even though we know we might not be able to see it. So some feel happier if it is there, big enough to see, albeit a bit overscale. The other example that comes to mind is brickwork - we know the relief between the bricks and the mortar is (usually) only slight, but plain, flat paper looks wrong and we tolerate textured surfaces that are a bit too severe (Exactoscale's architectural surfaces got it just right).
Rod

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Tim V
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Re: Gwr lineside fencing

Postby Tim V » Thu Jun 29, 2017 4:58 pm

A picture of a genuine length of GWR fencing at Midford.
Somerset Coal Canal - to Midford (18).JPG
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Tim V
(Not all railways in Somerset went to Dorset)

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Noel
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Re: Gwr lineside fencing

Postby Noel » Thu Jun 29, 2017 6:48 pm

The metal construction under the tree is the remains of an intermediate tensioner, which would originally have been fitted with eyebolts, so the wires could be kept reasonably taut. See post 14 here http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/23095-permanent-way-lineside-fencing-posts/. The barbed wire is, I assume, a post-closure alteration; the railway never used it in this style of fence so far as I know.
Regards
Noel

garethashenden
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Re: Gwr lineside fencing

Postby garethashenden » Fri Jun 30, 2017 4:42 am

garethashenden wrote:I've had good luck with EZ Line and (I think) Slaters fence posts. Make sure to drill through the holes before fitting them though!


Here are the photos I meant to show.
IMG_7321.JPG

IMG_7320.JPG


Photobucket is now trying to charge $400/year to host pictures, so I'll have to find something else. That will take a while to sort out.
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Enigma
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Re: Gwr lineside fencing

Postby Enigma » Sat Jul 01, 2017 8:03 am



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