Hi Folks,
Does anyone know of any bridges being used in a yard? I have a creek modelled under a five track wide yard and am wondering if I should make one wide bridge or five separate girder types or perhaps a culvert would work?
[:D]
Pictures or info of any kind on subject would help.
Canadian Shield
Alas, I didn’t get to take a picture of it, but there is a fine, short, wide wooden trestle over a creek in the old E&N Ry yards downtown Port Alberni on Vancouver Island. It is wide because it was built under a switch. Totally cool.
The north end of RF&P’s Potomac Yard crossed over a creek called Four Mile Run in Arlington, Virginia. They built a culvert going under all the tracks, which is the most economical way for the prototype cross a stream. Since bridges are expensive to build and maintain, railroads would avoid running a yard across a large body of water.
J. Fallon, Tidewater & Albemarle Railroad
I got some of these pier girders from Atlas:
http://www.discounttrainsonline.com/dto/item150-0082.html
I put six of them over a small gorge for my yard. It’s probably not very prototypical, but it works.
One wide bridge or culvert for all tracks, is the way that’s normall handled. We have a similar siuation in Wilmington, DE and use culvert running under all the tracks.
Nick
The prototype would almost certainly use a single wide culvert, not only to avoid the hassle of maintaining several bridges but because yardmen have to be able to move freely everywhere in a yard (to couple up air hoses, inspect cars, etc.) The bottleneck presented by ordinary bridges would be rather more than a nuisance.
That said, there probably was a yard somewhere that crossed a stream with a bunch of individual bridges. There really is a prototype for anything.
Thank you very much all of you for your responses. I think what I am going to go with is a culvert under the first four tracks, and as the 5th track is the mainline (but parallel to the yard) put a bridge there.
I river I
I I
I I
----------------------- yard track 4
----------------------- yard track 3
----------------------- yard track 2
----------------------- yard track 1
============= Mainline with a bridge
I I
I I
I river I
Uh-yea like that…sort of[:p][:D][:0]
JUst to add one more item to think of, especially in this day of environmental concern, the culvert would be your best best as this will keep seapage to a minimum.
Culvert would have also been used to keep costs down and to keep washout to a minumum.
Back When Union station had 15 tracks here in Denver there was ( and partially still is) a walkunder where poeple would walk under the tracks to the trains. Every track had a plate girder bridge on it. This was a passenger yard but I believe that it would work.
If you do a complete ballasted deck, The visible sides of the overpass only would need to show support girders. The mainline track/s could run over a more complicated bridge if desired. Abutments, any wing walls etc can be anything that fits your prototype.
Bob K.
Toronto Union Station went over a number of city streets. These were crossed using full concrete underpasses under all the tracks. By the time the yards reached the Don River, the tracks had been reduced to 2 or 3 – CNR didn’t spend anymore than necessary on bridges. (Union Station was built by the city!)
That’s good [:D]