  Using Monte Carlo simulations, we investigate the electrical conductivity of
networks of hard rods as a function of the volume fraction for two tunneling
conductance models. For a simple, orientationally independent tunneling model,
we observe non-monotonic behaviour of the bulk conductivity as a function of
volume fraction at the isotropic-nematic transition. However, this effect is
lost if one allows for anisotropic tunneling. We also compute the mesh number
of the Kirchhoff network, which turns out to be a simple alternative to the
computationally expensive conductivity of large systems in order to get a
qualitative estimate.
