I have a need for a 36"ish double track curved trestle with a minimum radius of 30". Are there kits for this? Blueprints? Stock materials that can be easily assembled? I’m not much for scratchbuilding, but have really enjoyed the wood kits I have assembled…
Thanks!
There are curved trestles but I don’t recall anything like what you want. You also don’t say if it should be a wood trestele or a modern iron or steel one. I’d check the Walthers catalog first to see if anything is close.
A quick flip through the Walthers Catalogue turned up item 345-2016: JV Models Curved Wood Trestle. A genuine wood trestle kit 36" long and 16" high but only single track. $60
I’m sure that if you got some more scale timber you could adapt it to dual track by extending the horizontal members on the bents and adding more vertical piles.
Alternitively you could get two and have the two tracks on seperate bridges which might look good.
I model in HO but use N scale deck girder bridge parts and scratchbuild the bents…it’s easy to do…first I cut the ties ,stain them, …then I take a piece of tracing paper and w/ a pencil rub it on the rails in the curve where the bridge goes…then I match the rails to the drawing and hand lay the rails to the ties with track spikes and then set them aside now, sit down and piece the girder sides together coresponding to the curved rail (there will be angled gaps in them when laided side by side which you can fill in later with styrene plastic sheeting and paint later) I cut the girders to the best fit…then i build the bents out of dow rod and balsa or bass wood strips for cross supports (you can also make steel beam towers with plastruct material) …I build a bridge base support for the bottom of the girders with balsa wood or basswood strips, glue the girders to the base, glue the bents to the base, glue the ties / rails to the top of the girders , put the bridge in place, and either pour a plaster base at the bottom of the bents with box molds or build the bases out of balsa wood …it’s easier than you think…get a copy of the kalmbach “bridges and trestles” …there are a lot of different bridge designs in the book…Chuck
Reno3000,
Campbell Scale Models has two kits for curved trestles, one taller than the other, and curve templates are included:
http://www.rrscenery.com/campbell1.html
You’ll probably need multiple kits for the length you want. They are single track, but as Neilmunck noted, you could have the two tracks on separate bridges.
Bob
NMRA Life 0543
Miami Valley Products makes 36" long trestle kits that can be assembled as straight or curved. They provide a box full of redwood strips and a template for one bent – you’re on your own for the rest of the design. I don’t recall if they make a double-track kit, however. If you can locate this company, be forewarned that delivery is extremely slow sometimes – I think it is a one-man operation who doesn’t put the kits together until he has several orders backlogged – and they are not cheap.
Save that sprue: All the horizontal stringers in the pic are sprue from my Walthers mine kit. The verticals and bracing are scale lumber from LHS.----Bryant
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