Locomotive bell and whistle cords

This is a post I drafted last year, which, for some reason, I never published at the time:

Sometimes it's hard to know whether or not to model things like wires, or rope. From a scale perspective, often rope and wire will end up being larger than scale. At the same time, often when your mind expects to see the detail or wire or rope in a certain spot, it can look strange if it is missing. 

When completing some warbird aeroplane models with my son, we added the radio wires. I was really happy with how they finished off the models and I think they photograph better than they do without them. This got me thinking about such features on my layout, the obvious candidates being bell and whistle cords on the locomotives. I've also been keen to model a single telegraph wire along the line between stations for Morse code. But that's a project for another day.

As an experiment during my upgrades of the Jupiter, I added a bell cord and a metal whistle lever. I was pleased with the results and decided these details to the rest of the roster. 

I used the same method as I did for the radio wires on the planes, using simple grey cotton thread for the cord. However, as it comes, the cord is not stiff enough and does not have a realistic sag to it to emulate the way a full-scale cord would hang. 

However, if you run the cotton between a bit of PVA glue on your fingers it stiffens the thread up. While the thread is drying, attach a clothes peg to the bottom of the thread and hang it to dry.  This keeps it nice and straight. Afterwards, it won't curl when you cut to length and will be stiff. 

I cut the thread into lengths long enough to have a realistic sag to it and then attached them to the models. The thread now could be bent to the shape of a saving bell or whistle cord.

Overall, I'm quite happy with the results.

A 1/72 Scale Junkers JU88 I made up with my son, featuring a radio aerial wire, which gave the idea for using the same method for bell and whistle cords.

The bell cord and whistle lever are visible in this photo of the Jupiter, taken on the old Thoroughfare Gap layout.