Fold the paper over the wire so that the open ends meet. The
shortening of the flag by the fold around the wire isn’t notice-
able on the finished scale flag, but if you do want your flags to
be exact, just add one or two scale inches to your scale mea-
surements above. Glue the paper together with a tiny dab of
white glue, and paint your wire black, gray, or a rust color [10].
You now have a flag ready to be used on your layout.
To simulate a rail-mounted flag, bend the flag staff like the
blue flags in [11] and then drill a hole of the appropriate size
between the rails close to either rail. For a flag mounted to a
tie between the rails drill a hole centered on a tie or use the
rail spike hole that is pre-drilled on flextrack.
11. Modeled flag assortment, left to right, top to bottom.
Blue tie-mount metal flag and blue rail-mount metal
flag. Red cloth flags, red tie-mount/right side ballast-
mount metal flag, alternate red tie-mount/ right side
ballast-mount metal flag. Yellow cloth flags and right side
ballast-mount metal flag. yellow-over-red cloth flags.
Green cloth flags and right side ballast-mount metal flag.
11
12. Model stop order, red flag.
12
Maintenance flags - 7
For blue styrene signs to simulate metal, I changed the mea-
surement to 15” x 18’” using .010” styrene. For red, yellow,
yellow-over-red and green styrene flags, I like the proportions
of HO flags that are 18” x 24”, so this is what I used. Red, yel-
low and green styrene flags can be supported by one stake to
simulate a metal sign, or by two stakes for cloth signs mounted
on the right side of the track. Yellow-over-red flags are always
mounted on the right side of the track, and would most likely
be made of cloth. Single-stake yellow and green metal flags
may also be used by some railways [11].
As model railroaders, we likely won’t be able to place the flags
the specified distance from a hazard, but we can place them
far enough away from a hazard to allow our trains to come to
a slow stop, or proceed at a slower speed. Whether you make
paper or styrene flags, are serious about operations, or you just
MRH-Dec 2014
