Building my second trestle - picture intense - updated 9-20-06

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
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Ok guys, this is in no way supposed to be a clinic, or a tutorial of any sort, it is merely the steps I am taking and the methods I am using to create my trestle. Hopefully it may help someone out there, at the very least some may find it interesting.

I decided to do this as a motivational thing for myself to keep my momentum going throughout the building process and also pass on some of the things I discover along the way. As some of you know I have finally started building the Kinsol Trestle, it scales down to 7’ long and 2’ high, with a total of 41 bents.

Part One - The Jigs

With this much repetition jigs are a must so the first stage was to create these. I made a double sided jig, one side for the bents,

and on the reverse side I mapped out the supports for the actual river span section.

as I was also going to be cutting all the wood to size myself I added a cutting jig on the bottom of the ‘B side’ this is simply made from some 1/8 x 1/8 balsa and ensures that all the bracing strips are exactly 1/8 wide.

Step Two - Starting Construction

Roughly working out how much wood I would use I placed the order @ the LHS ($85) now the fun could begin,

the tools I am using are shown below this is all I have needed so far. I found that replacing the nozzle on the wood glue with that from a white glue bottle gave enough control to just place the glue direct from the bottle without the need to squeeze out a puddle and apply with a toothpic.

I drew a highly detailed plan to enable me to work out ho

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That looks Awesome! I can’t wait till it’s installed. Please post new pics to see how your progress is going. I’m sure this bridge will be a real “eye-catcher” with your vistors once finished.

Keep up the great work.
Bob…

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Well Karl, That is inspiring. I have a huge curved trestle to build sometime this year. I am collecting ideas and inspiration. Someday we need to get all the trestle people together (on line) and have a picture swap.

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[bow] You are most definitely DAH MAN! [:D] What really amazes me, apart from all your fine craftsmanship, is that you have managed to capture the essence of the trestle entirely! You seem to have found the dimensions and made it all look right.

Now I’m pumped!! I want to see how it all fits in your layout, and what it will look like when it is all finished.

I hope you might consider using a little lash of creosote on that girl. She would appreciate it.

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Thanks for the support guys, just what I needed to get me back at it, hopefully have some more pics tomorrow, I feel a late night looming [:D]

nope my friend it will not be creosoted, the reason the initial 2 sections have not been joined is that I have decided to attempt the weathered look of the trestle, I didnt want to colour the pieces prior to assembly as I wanted the glue to bond as strongly as possible, and I also realise that colouring it after assembly, with a brush by hand or airbrush would be next to imposible.

So, there is the dilema, what to do, …

My thinking is that, as I have discovered and Harold (HMinky) has documented kilz primer and then india ink gives a great, old grey, weathered wood look, so I am building in sections and will “dip” these into a large container of first diluted kilz and when dry into a large container of either india ink, or more likely diluted minwax ebony wood stain which also gives a similar appearance.

Hopefully this will give the desired effect, and with some detail weathering work by hand later I am hoping it will pass muster, if not I guess I will start again and stain it all before assembly[:O]

ohhh, the umm calculations were fairly simple, I divided the overall length of the real trestle by 41(bents) and then divided that number by 87, it came out at a very little over 2" so I used some artistic lisence [;)] and went with exactly 2" for ease of working with. I worked from this calculation and worked out the rest of the dimensions, so the entire structure is based on the only two facts I could find, ie: length and bents, it seems to be working out well so far tho.

Have fun & be safe,
Karl.

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What can I say…WOW!

I’ll be waiting to see more!

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Nice Trestle! I am going to start building a trestle (maybe this week) to cross the river on my HO scale layout, Mine won’t be nearley as big as yours, but I plan to have one that will support 2 tracks, is this normal? Does anyone have any info they would share with me, maybe some pics? Mike

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Karl, as always, great work. Your work is definitely inspiring.

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Beautiful work, as usual, Karl! [:)][tup] Looking forward to the continuing saga. This pictorial will be helpful for me - if and when I should decide to include a “smaller” one on my layout sometime.

Tom

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Thanks for the encouragement guys,

I finally got all the bracing done on the remaining bent and then started work on the trestle deck. I laid out some flextrack as per my trackplan to the curve I wanted and traced it out onto some painters paper ontop of some 1/2" foam using push pins to hold it in place. As I was going to need to make the deck and then attach the bents from the underside I cut out the paper track and inverted it.

From here I placed 2" nails along the curve and then bent the splines to the required curvature. This was tedious but nessecary.

I placed the semi-completed span section where required and built around it.

I then glued the bent ‘caps’ to the deck so that it would hold the curve when the nails were removed the following day.

The next couple of work/play sessions were spent attaching the bents to the deck.

While these were drying I had removed the center span and proceded to add the crossbracing to this section of the trestle, here is couple of proto pics followed by my progress so far, things are coming along nicely, in my eyes anyways. The concrete support is carved from a 2" piece of foam and will be replaced if I cant get it to look right with alot more work.

Thanks for reading, more pics as they happen…

Have fun & be safe
Karl.

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I’ll join that club. I’m going to build a little for now, but the time will come in the not too distant future when I tear a hunk out of my layout and start cutting little strips of wood. I’m cheating though. I have an itty bitty table saw.

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You have all the makings of a structural engineer! Great planning and assembly sequence. What type of footings are you planning to install?
Stone or re-enforced concrete?

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All I can say, Karl, is if you use the COMPLETED trestle to test your Kilz/India ink/wood stain procedure, you are a MUCH braver man than I!!! I would have performed numerous tests before even attempting to build the trestle. (Just call me ol’ fraidy cat!)

Your work is outstanding! I am totally in awe!

More pictures, please!

Darrell, is that awestruck or awesome?, and quiet…for now

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Incredible.[wow]

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Thank you all.

Crandell, in one of the pictures you have you are standing next to the tourist sign which shows an old picture of the trestle with a loco on the trestle, can you make out which type of loco it is as I would like to purchase one if possible, it would be cool to try and replicate that photo when my trestle is complete.

Darrell, it cant go that badly wrong… can it? too late now, I will be testing on scrap wood before I ‘dip’ the trestle, and hopefully the glue will hold together through the dunking too !!! I am trying to come up with a better solution tho but I couldnt wait any longer to start building, I’m just too impatient. [:D]

Bob, from the picture I have and the panoramic view below (which you can zoom in on some of the ‘footings’) the trestle seems to be pile driven in areas, or just sitting there in others. I cant make out any footings, but Crandell will be able to answer that question for me

Panoramic view : http://www.railimages.com/albums/karlallison/amg.mov

More pics of the real trestle on pages 7&8 on my railimages site.

Have fun & be safe,
Karl.

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Karl,

Knowing you, your going to model the dry rot in that picture as well.

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I’ve been studying the jig. What did you use to cut it. If you were using 1/8 wood for the bents, a circular saw blade would be just about the right width.

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what a great thread Karl. The funny thing is that the model trestle looks more massive in some way than the real thing!

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I can’t wait to see it when its done.

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Chip,

I drew out the leg placement on a piece of plywood then placed the 1/8 balsa on these lines. Either side of this I glued full strips of 1/8 and removed the center piece, thus leaving the guides for each leg.

Once the guides were dry I marked off where the cross members would go and cut out these areas with a razor saw, to eliminate the problem of glueing the legs to the jig when attaching the cross members.

fixed expandable image of trestle…

Have fun & be safe,
Karl.