Despite their many benefits, Bridge Railings appear to have been designed with the primary objective of keeping pedestrians and vehicles safe from falling off bridges. To maintain their durability and strength, these kinds of structures can be constructed from concrete or steel to maintain their durability and strength over time.
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The purpose of the bridge railings is to make sure that people are aware of them when driving through the bridge, so that they are safe and attentive. Besides restricting traffic inside the bounds of the bridge, these railings also improve the aesthetics of the bridge by adding to its aesthetic value.
Although railing systems do not provide structural support to bridges, they must still be durable enough for them to withstand accidents in the future. There is a greater amount of rigidity to bridge railings than conventional highway railings and a higher degree of stiffness than flexible highway railings.
All around the United States, there are railings available in a variety of shapes and sizes, which can be used in both residential and commercial areas. There are a number of service level criteria that must be met when selecting railings for a route, including design speed, average daily traffic volumes, and the number of vehicles that are expected to use the route, and the layout of the facility.
There are other factors that influence the selection of railings, including functional and aesthetic considerations. A bridge and approach are essentially framed by four basic railing systems: bridge railings, transitional railings, approach guardrails, and approaches with fall protection facilities.
W-Beam Bridge Railings
In bridges that are not subjected to high traffic levels, W-beam railings are recommended. A W-Beam railing has a two-wave shape and is usually attached to a post or truss girders, and it is a simple steel railing structure that can be designed to be more robust depending on the situation.
Yesterday I was looking at my track inventory to determine exactly what I had for safety rail track. I had 3 long sections of a commercial produced code100 track. That will just barely cover my 3 tracks that cross my entrance way bridges. I need some more.
I had a number of plain bare rail pieces that I contemplated adding onto std flex track. But as I began experimenting with this idea I was having trouble getting a decent close spacing between the two rails. I tried several different brands of track, and carving off a portion of the tie plates to get a closer spacing. But so far less than encouraging results.
Any ideas??
Maybe my idea of how close
Maybe my idea of how close this extra rail needs to be is distorted?
This looks to be an even different size rail?
My Shinohara Bridge Track & making some
So here is piece of that 'bridge track' I had collected up. It labeled Shinohara
The sections are about 3 feet long, and it appears the inner and outer rail sizes are the same.
Here is a comparison, the Shinohara track on the bottom and a normal Atlas CODE100 flex track on the top. But there are two different safety/guard rails laid in there. The top rail is another piece of Code100, the bottom one is Code83
You can see that the molded rail keepers on the stock track keeps the guard rails away from the main rail by a greater distance than with the 'commercial built' Shinohara track. But this apparently is not a problem when I look around at all the prototype installation that vary widely?
Tracks from the end view,...
How effective can these guard
How effective can these guard rails actually be on our scale model railroad track?
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I am currently working on my entrance-way bridges that comprise my swing-down bridge structure
https://forum.mrhmag.com/post/layout-room-entrance-swingdown-bridges-3-of-them-in-combo-
https://forum.mrhmag.com/post/layout-room-entrance-swingdown-bridges-3-of-them-in-combo-
At the actual cut joints I am considering the multiple use of sectioned up Atlas rerailers. BUT yesterday I started to think of an alternate plan to one particular aspect of that use. I had been thinking of using a cut up portion of the Atlas rerailer on that exiting portion of the bridge track that leaves the bridge going to the cut joint itself. In other words I would have a small portion of the atlas rerailer between the end of the bridge track and the angled cut joint space.
What if I left this short section of rerailer out,.... and just extended the Shinohara guard rail track over to this cut joint space,...and bent the ends of those guard rails inward like many of the prototypes. Would it work ??
Guard rails
Guard rails keep cars that are ALREADY derailed from going off the ties on a bridge, destroying it.
They do not PREVENT a car from derailing. They do not rerail a previously derailed car.
If your cars are derailed before they get to the bridge, then the model guard rails might work. If you have quality track work and your cars are normally not derailed, then it won't matter. In any case a model car hitting a model bridge will rarely destroy it (if its a commercially made bridge.)
Also note the commercial bridge track is greatly overbuilt. The guard rails have tie plates and spikes in every tie. If you look closely at the pictures the prototype rails don't have tie plates and are only spiked every so often.
I will have a full size Atlas
I will have a full size Atlas rerailer incoporated into the decks track as it comes to the slotted space of the bridge's track. So then it is only a misalignment in this slot space that could cause a derailment. That's the derailment I am trying to account for. My basic question is could I count on that rather closely spaced Shinohara bridge track (with its closely spaced code 100 guard rail) to contain this derailment,...or to even rerail it??
the Shinohara track on the left in this photo
Experiment
I did a very brief little experiment with those bridge track rails butted up against conventional flex track, and found as you said DAVE no rerailing capabilities at all. However I did find that the joint could tolerate a little misalignment without derailing some hand pushed trucks,...actually a bit more than I suspected.
So I have decided to hook things up like this to start out with. I will leave the safety rail track in its longest form all the way to the gap/slot. There it will mate up with a rerailer like this,...
If for some reason I have problems with this arrangement I can shorten the bridge/safety track, then insert a portion of rerailer in that space.
But I think this will work, ....and I can minutely adjust alignments by ever so slightly swinging the rerailer piece just a bit.
The upper bridge rail would look something like this (with the rail cut properly of course).
Ramp Portions
@Dave
I had/have considered something like this after noticing the importance of those ramp portions. One hesitancy in doing so right away was my reluctance to cut/shortened those special Shinohara bridge rails. I only have 3 of them to experiment with, so my thoughts were that i would first try the 'longer version' before modifying them for another consideration.
If they work out as I currently have them configured, then it will save me a lot of additional cutting/modifying.
This was a consideration at one time, but now I am hoping to keep that rerailer sections off of the bridges themselves.
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