Steel Grade Crossing HO Scale

The steel version of a crossing

Where heavy machines drive across a track, a wooden fill does not last long. Sidings at ironworks, harbor transfer yards and the grounds of large plants therefore solved the running surface with sheet metal or cast plates, which could be replaced piece by piece. This set models exactly such a version.

What it contains

Included are two crossings, each 6.9 cm long, shaped as steel plates laid between the rails and outside the track. The material is injection-molded polystyrene, so the parts are stiff and straight and call for no building and no gluing of parts out of a sheet.

Laying it on the track

The seating face of the part is cut away in the places where the fastening of the rail sits on the ties, so that the fill goes right down onto the base. Pre-cut spacing pads belong to the package, and with them the height of the fill is matched to the rail profile used; without them the plate would either stick out above the head of the rail or reach into the space for the flange.

How it looks in a scene

A steel crossing asks for different surroundings than a wooden one. A concrete or asphalt roadway joined tightly to the edge of the plates suits it, with rusty edges in the places where water gets in and wear down to shiny metal along the line where the wheels pass. It is precisely the contrast between a polished strip and a corroded surface that turns a flat plate into a detail the eye notices on a layout.

Two pieces in the package

A pair makes it possible to serve an industrial siding from both sides of a hall or to cover the entrance and the exit of a yard so that the two places match each other. If a single crossing is enough, the remaining part can be put away for later, because nothing from it is used up during the installation.