Glass beats are purchased at Walmart, the brass nails from any good hardware store or home improvement center, the brass rods, the are actually steel with a brass coating are 1/6" welding rods, a one pound package contains well over 100' of material and cost only about $5.00, Much cheaper than scale rails.
The Route of the Broadway Lion The Largest Subway Layout in North Dakota.
Here there be cats. LIONS with CAMERAS
You have a very creative and unique layout. Where would I get glass beads, brass nail and brass rods? To be honest with you I'm not good with written instructions. I will need an illustration on how to build your 3rd rail system.
The information you have provided is very thoughtful.
Grrrr....I was just about to post this link to the Lion's thread:
http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/11/t/211009.aspx
It's got a nice video showing his third rails and the rest of the largest subway layout in North Dakota. At the bottom of page 2 of the thread, he gives another description of his third rails.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
The LION cheats. Him used 3/16" square dimensional wood, painted brown on top to represent the protection board, and black on the edges to represent the shadow under the board. This is seated on glass beads to represent the insulators.
However I am going to try something else. I will use the same glass beads and hold them in place with a brass nail. I will the solder a length of brass colored steel welding rod to the top of these, I may sand the rai down to dive it a flat top. After this I will take some individual staples from a staple gun, straighten out one of the bends so that I will have an "L" shaped piece that will become a bracket, I will then glue wooden strips just under the bracket. I fancy that it will look just perfect, but I'll only bother to put this in for very photogenic or visitor visible locations along the line.
With 14 miles of track, buying manufactured product is not viable, after all let us get our priorities correst: Do you have any idea how much it costs just to feed a LION?
ROAR
Are you looking for an over running or under running (inverted) third rail. I think the Model Memories third rail is of the under running type and is used by the NYC / Metro North RR's. The over running type is used by the LIRR and the NYCTA and would be easier to scratch build. The white protection board on top is made of Fibre Glass. It used to be a heavily creosoted 2' X 10 wooden board that was black.
I just looked at the Image Replicas site and it appears that they make the type used by the LIRR/ NYCTA and the listing shows a drawing of the third rail cross scetion with the rail, insulator, protection board and bracket.
Does anybody know where to get 3rd rail similar to PATCO's High Speed Line? I know that Model Memories and Image Replicas Makes them, however the one from Model Memories is not the one I'm looking for. I do not have a good illustration of the one from Image Replicas even if it's the one, or should I construct the PATCO's third rail myself. I like the white coated top of PATCO's 3rd rail system. I will paint it myself. If so what are the techniques for constructing one?