Guard rails

Need more data.

What are we 'guarding'? 

Railroad track: Turnouts/switches, bridge/trestle tracks, road crossings, etc.?

Highways: Along and beside the roads, at the end of parking spaces?

The term conjures up several possibilities.

Another Ken

Good question, Ken.

Guard rail where to road ends at the train tracks instead of crossing the tracks

Ken

Okie-dokie.

Lots of possibilities for that one. 

Early days/materials...lots of wood: Posts and rails=dowels and stripwood. a.k.a., fence.

Later: Wood posts (dowels) and sheet metal (card stock, styrene, brass strips, etc.) fastened to the wood posts.  Also, steel rope (heavy thread/cord painted silver, or check supplies for military modelers...lots of steel rope in their department!) instead of the wood or flat sheet metal rails. 

Still later: short lengths of small steel H-beam or I-beam (styrene or ABS shapes) for posts, rolled sheet metal (sheet styrene with large corrugations [I like JTT's versions:skku's 97402-97404], slit into strips 2 or 3 corrugations wide, attached to the beam posts). 

Some budget-minded MOW souls simply buried short lengths of railroad rail vertically at the end of the road to drive home the point to the local sots that the crossing was 'not' anymore.  Of course, if you have some extra track rail, this is easy to replicate.  If not, Keil Line (direct or through Walthers) makes some white metal castings to help...https://dealers.walthers.com/e...roductinfo/382-48420

Lots of signs and painting possibilities...you know, from yellow or white 'zebra stripes' to "Road Closed" to "The End" .  

Brings to mind a 35mm slide I know is buried somewhere in my Dad's old slide collection....   We were driving from our home in D.C. to a beach on the Chesapeake Bay back in the mid 50's.  Dad made a wrong turn down a dusty road and began to mutter classic commentary (think: Ralphie's dad responding to furnace 'clinkers' in The Christmas Story).  All of a sudden he switched emotional gears and started laughing boisterously!  The dusty road came to an abrupt end.  A guardrail with the sign "Dead End" was in front of us.  On the other side of the guardrail was...a cemetery!  Needless to say, he HAD to fetch the camera from the trunk of the 1949 Buick Super and document the serendipitous occasion.

The other memorable part of that day, however, was some bad stings from the bay sea nettles (jellyfish).  The beach's 'nettle nets' were obviously useless!

Maybe others will have some photos and other ideas.  I believe one of the manufacturers makes a modern-style roadside guardrail kit...I'll see if I can find it.

Hope it all helps, Ken.

Ken

I made "metal" ones by cutting PlasTruct plastic Corrigated Roofing sheets into strips (longways}...then gluing them onto plastic "posts". Once done, spray silver. This has enough "flex" for gentle curves. For curves, it is best to put a "pin" in the bottom of every 2 or 3 posts, with small holes for them in the layout, to take the strain off the glue.