I really should know the name for these, but somehow I can't remember...take your bogie carriage and usually between the bogies is some strapping, used to give the chassis extra strength. They are usually formed of two vertical posts with a horizontal between them and two diagonals between the post and the chassis. often they are modelled using wire.
hopefully you get my drift...
anyway, does anyone know of any plastic or metal castings available 'off the shelf' for these which would help a 009 modeller with a load of bogie coaches requiring such details, but without the time to fashion them all from wire?
they need to be about 40-50mm long on average.
Colin
I can't help with any supplier in 009, but the rods are called truss rods, and the two vertical posts are called queen posts. I wonder whether there might be something useful in the US HO scale catalogues?
When you say 40-50mm long, where are you measuring? A truss rod runs from headstock to headstock (at least in my experience) but many modellers would only bother with the visible bits, ignoring the ends from where the diagonal disappears behind the solebar.
If you just want a "near enough" representation of truss rods, rather than a true scale model, may I suggest you use nylon fishing line, sorry I'm not into fishing to be able to know which one's are suitable, mine came from an angling friend who supplied a selection from his cast offs ( sorry about the pun ). The queen posts are short sections of Evergreen small square section plastic rod notched to carry the fishing line.
The technique is to fix the queen posts to the underside of the floor, not just a butt joint but reinforced with a short section of wire, the nylon fishing line is threaded through a hole in the floor and secured inside the vehicle with a knot and a drop of superglue. When set pass the free end of the line over the notched end of the queen posts and then back into the inside of the vehicle at the other end and again secured with a spot of super glue.
Alternatively, I have also used 7mm scale hand rail knobs as the queen posts and brass handrail wire to represent the truss rods. Both methods work for me. By no means a true scale representation of the real thing, but good enough to fool most of the people most of the time.
Thanks for this one Gary,
I like the sound of the fishing line idea, I will have to give this a try.
Darren.
I use a similar system to Gary but use striped single strand bell wire rather than fishing line. Sections of the insulation can be used to look like the adjustable sections on the truss rods if required, and as these tend to be quite susceptible to damaged on a model, if they do get bent they can easily be re-straightened. If brass or tin (steel plate) queen posts are used the whole assembly can be soldered in place if needed. Although like Gary I glue my ones on.
Brian