Bridges

[goscrewyourselves]

Dale,

"...I also found that after taking the section from the molds that the backs would need sanding to flatten a little..."

Before you try to remove the tiles from the mold, make yourself a small sanding block and sand them back while still in the mold. That way, you have far less chance of breaking them.

 

[rzw0wr]

Hmmmmm, good idea Tony.

 

[rzw0wr]

Well, on with the continuing saga with bridges.
As I noted in an above post the bridges I purchased were a little out of my league right now.
I put them back for awhile until I get better at structure building.

I purchased 2 new bridge kits from Walthers.
I THOUGHT they were simple kits.
Add said easy to build.
They turned out to be Plastruct kits.
These are as close to scratch build as you can get I think.
You have to make every part yourself.
Even add your own rivets if you want rivet detail.
No template, no diagrams to work from and most locating dims are in 1:1 feet.
Instructions are almost worthless.

sigh......
I think I will give them a try.
Build the things to look something like a bridge and let that be good enough.

Poor ol' Dale, my life is so hard.

 

[Motley]

Really? Oh man. I don't have the Walthers bridge kits. But I thought they were easy to build and no cutting. Holy crap probably a good thing I never purchased one.

 

[rzw0wr]

Michael, these are not Walthers kits. They are Plastruct kits from Walthers.

 

[Motley]

Huh? Why didn't you just buy the Walthers thru truss bridges? Why wonder, yep those Plasticstruct kits are the same as the Central Valley kits.

Trust me, just get the Walthers bridges. Here: http://www.modeltrainstuff.com/Walthers-HO-Truss-Bridge-Single-Track-Kit-p/933-3185.htm

 

[AyTrane]

I always like to look at what was done and mimic that (after all, nothing is more believable than real life). I have many books on bridges that gave dimensions and typical details. I also went to school for Structural Engineering...that helps too

I built an HO scale bridge for a gentleman's layout that needed to span an n-scale layout. I ended up making a bridge that was just over 7 feet long. I knew I couldn't have a center pier for the bridge, so I decided to go with an arch bridge similar to the one over New River Gorge. I drew the whole thing up in AutoCAD to get my dimensions, then I laid out a template on a table to build the model. You can see my progress below...Sadly I don't have a photo of the bridge with a "finished" layout.

As you can see, it barely fit in my car to get it over to it's new home.

Bridges give a layout a lot of character and a sense of realism. Even a simple trestle like the one below helps out a scene. You don't need a big monster like the one above to WOW people.

Good luck!