Making Aluminum Gauge Rods on my Table Saw

We have a lot of used ties on the Mill Brook Railroad. They call them relay in the business. That's because they've been part of a railroad track before, then pulled up from their original location and re-laid in a new location. A bunch of these ties are now splitting out from the ends, which is releasing the screws that hold our track together. We did a bunch of work to the track before it got cold out and thought we'd nipped our problems in the bud, but with the cold comes new cracks in the ties.
Normally, we'd just replace these ties with new ones and not have to deal with it again for several years, but with the cold weather comes frozen ballast. It's very difficult to change ties in frozen ballast and even harder to kick the ballast back in place with the tamping rod when everything around it is frozen. The solution: gauge rods. Very simply, they're a rod with clamps on either end, and you set the distance between the rails (the gauge) by adjusting the nuts holding the clamps. Nobody makes gauge rods for this size track, so I'm making my own. On the table saw out of aluminum
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