# "Quick and Dirty" Dummy Fishplates



## rhyman (Apr 19, 2009)

Fishplates have been used since the 1840’s on railroads. A fishplate, also called a splice bar, angle bar, or joint bar, is a metal bar that is bolted to the ends of two rails to join them together. The name is derived from _fish_, a wooden bar with a curved profile used to strengthen a ship's mast. The top and bottom edges of a fishplate are tapered inwards so the device wedges itself between the top and bottom of the rail when it is bolted into place. Fishplates are made in three different styles as shown below with their common names:


























Most fishplates are of the 4-bolt or 6-bolt variety, as shown in the two photos below. In either case, the direction of the bolts is usually alternated. This is so that a derailed wheel flange on either side of the rail can only knock off half of the nuts holding the fishplate to the rails. The length of the fishplate varies between sixteen and thirty-six inches for different size rails and so does the bolt hole sizes and spacing.



















In the smaller modeling scales, detail manufacturers make dummy fishplates for rail in code 70 and code 100 sizes. I am not aware of any large scale detail fishplates for the code 215 rail that I use on my layout. I decided to make my own. I first made a set from .005 brass stock and added NBW castings to represent the bolts. These looked okay visually, but did not work well with the oversize flanges on most large scale wheel sets.


My second attempt actually worked out much better, and was a lot easier to produce. I drew a visual representation of a fishplate on my computer using a graphics drawing program (Microsoft Visio.) I used the fill function to shade the fishplate a rail brown color with black outlines for the nuts and bolts. I sized the drawing to be 1/8” high to fit snugly into the web of the code 215 rail, and made it 1” long. Here is an enlargement of the drawing:












I replicated the image enough times to fill up a standard 8½ x 11 inch sheet of paper and printed it out on a color laser jet printer. I spray painted both sides of the paper with multiple coats of clear flat spray paint. Here is what the sheet looked like after painting:












I cut out the individual fishplates using a razor knife and straight edge. I notched through the head of the rail at 33 scale foot intervals with a razor saw to represent individual rail lengths. I attached a dummy fishplate to each side of the rail web at each notch using a coat of rail brown paint as the adhesive. Here is how it turned out:


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## Dr Rivet (Jan 5, 2008)

Bob 

Llagas Creek Railways standard insulated rail joiners for both their code 250 and code 215 rail are very detailed representations of a joint bar with alternating square nuts and round bolt heads. The drawback is that they are plastic and would insulate every section of track. The REALLY BIG drawback is that they are not cheap [even from me, as a major LC Ry dealer]. I suppose you could purchase some to use as patterns for your own use, but I think your 'low relief" solution presents a very credible appearance. It is great when someone realizes that the track is a model too, just like the locomotives, cars, and lineside structures. Very cool.


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## bnsfconductor (Jan 3, 2008)

Interesting solution. My idea for modeling joint bars is somewhat similar. On the inside part of the rail I'm going to use just a single piece of strip styrene so the flanges won't hit the bolt pattern. On the outside of the rail I'll duplicate the Bolt/Nut/Bolt/Nut pattern. The only thing I don't like about the Llagas joiners is that they have the Bolt head all on one side, and then the nut washer on the other side. 

Craig


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