1:35 Railroad Buffer Block

The end of the track and what it means

A buffer stop is one of those small things that give a scene a particular place at once. Where there is a buffer stop, the track ends, which means a siding, a ramp or a dead-end station throat. Modelers use it above all in scenes with vehicles being loaded onto flatcars, because it is right at the end of the track that a tank or a truck drives up onto the ramp. The massive face with the buffer heads and the feet sunk into the ballast give the element its characteristic outline.

Which family the element comes from

The goods come from the Spanish firm Acrylicos Vallejo, which alongside its modeling paints also runs a building program for dioramas. The program is arranged in numbered groups, and the buffer stop closes the group of large building sections as its last item. The same group also holds a separate piece of track and an extensive base with a crossing of road and railroad, so a whole railroad motif can be put together without mixing different sources.

Placing it in the scene

The buffer stop is set so that it meets the rails exactly in line; otherwise the mismatch is obvious at first glance. Ballast is poured around its foot and fixed with thinned glue. It pays to tell three things apart in the painting: the steel of the face, the wood of the ties and the stone beneath them. Pronounced rust and scuffed spots at the height of the buffers belong on the face, because that is where the cars strike the buffer stop. A tuft of weeds at the foot then settles the whole element into a setting where nothing has happened for a long time. The rest of the impression is taken care of by the surroundings: spilled coal, an oil stain between the ties or a discarded chock under a wheel say more about the traffic than the finest rust.