Alternative Chains

When it comes to chains, like those that wind up the hopper doors, the finest real chain I can find is 40 links-per-inch. Some jewelry is slightly finer chain but those have square links and look better for personal adornment than industrial utility. 40 links per inch scales to slightly bigger than 2-inch chain, and the drawings call for a quarter that size.

I’ve tried several approaches to faking finer chain over the years – pairs of twisted wires, a single fine wire with dots of glue, jagged wire. The trouble with all these approaches when it comes to the chains in question is that they are too stiff. It’s difficult to wrap even a single strand of wire around the bar that holds the doors up.

Maybe I ought to have printed the chains but that would have made colouring the hoppers even harder! So, I was about to leave them off, until a conversation with my mother floated into my consciousness.

My mother is a tatter. This, virtually lost art, was a simpler way to make lace than the traditional bobbin lace. It didn’t last long because crochet came along and was even simpler. When I confessed to my mother that I wasn’t sure I could tell the difference, she proclaimed I could: tatting is all loops, and crochet is chains.

Well, what if I could crochet a very fine chain? It turns out I can, but even thread is no improvement on 40 links per inch. To get a really fine look, you need to separate out the core of the thread and crochet that. This is easier than making wire fences, but not much!

I tried to count the stitches in an inch of this “chain,” but kept losing track. So I have no idea if it’s close to scale, but it does look much less chonky than the real chain, and reads more like chain than like rope. Who knew that crochet had a place in model railroading?