All the gear we used to repair under the wharf is 30mm or 24mm diameter threaded steel rod wrapped in denso. Nut, Washer both ends etc. Man we has some serious augers for drilling down there. The smallest nail I hit in for 3 years was 9 inch long deck spikes. scale down the above for proto sizes. Depending on what era you wish to go with, we found the nuts we were pulling out / cutting off were square up until around the 30s. I found most of the timber wharf sections we replaced / repaired were built with hex nuts after that.
Cheers...
Chris from down under...
We're all here because we're not all there...
The fasteners, universally, would have been tempered steel threaded rod about 1" in diameter. The lengths of the rods would be customized on site for the purpose intended. In the case of bolting stringers atop the crown timbers on a trestle, 40-45" rods with the tops cut off once the bolts had been tightened...if necessary. For the aforementioned Howe Truss, the dimensions of the truss would dictate the lengths of the steel rods, but there would be few shorter than 12'. Lots of large nuts and heavy washers, of course.
I don't think there was any standard. Many railroads purchased bridges from manufacturers such as the Pegram bridges and some of the Howe type wooden bridges. Thus they used what was supplied. Some railroads kept their own engineers and made their own designs. There were a lot of hardware suppliers for railroad related equipment.
If you can find a photo that is a solution for a prototype you might be interested in modeling.
Grandt Line and Tichy are both suppliers of detail parts and the pieces you would be needing are called NBW for nut-bolt-washer castings.
They come on a plastic sprue with a varying numbers per sprue based on casting size. They also come with various washer shapes: square, rectangle, round and oval. They dimensions will also tell you the scale nut size.
There are tons to choose from so you might order several sizes and select from that and save the remaining for another cool project.
I think Precision Scale in Montana makes a brass version of NBW's but I have no other information on what they might offer.
see ya
Bob
The one's I saw were large nuts, bolts and washers--some but not all with square heads.
Richard
Does anyone know what kind of fasteners were used to hold parts of a timber trestle bridge together? I am modeling a logging railroad so everythings pretty primative.