Plastic porch or deck railing systems and component parts thereof

Plastic railing systems include extruded hollow fiberglass reinforced top and bottom rail sections and newel posts, and hollow plastic balusters having locking tabs on one end adapted to be snap locked into mounting holes in a bottom wall of the top rail section. The locking tabs are retained within the mounting holes by retaining lips protruding from a front edge of the locking tabs into overlying relation with an inner surface of the bottom wall of the top rail section surrounding the holes. At the bottoms of the balusters are dowels that are adapted to be received in predrilled holes in a top wall of the bottom rail section and secured in place as by driving fasteners through predrilled pilot holes in a bottom wall of the bottom rail section into the dowels. Rake balusters are made by filling the balusters with a rigid high density plastic foam material and cutting off the ends of the balusters at the desired rake angle for attachment to the top and bottom rail sections using suitable fasteners. The lower end portions of the newel posts are filled with a rigid high density plastic foam that permits the posts to be mounted to any type of floor surface using the same basic mounting methods used to attach wood newel posts to such floor surface.