Being it was a rainy Saturday here in the North East I decided to take a ride up to my LHS and while looking for some bridge piers I came across a new line he was carrying. Grand Central Gems they make tress, rock molds, car loads and pre made timber trestle parts. I picked up a few bags of their componetnts as i need to build a small low trestle to span a scale 160’ (HO) Was just wondering if anyone had ever used any of their stuff and what you thought of it.
Here’s a link to their site
I use their Aspens and lodge pole pines, as well as 2 trestle decks that I am using for a couple of bridges. I will make my own bents and trusses, but I like all of their stuff, it’s quality.
I built a six foot long curved timber trestle on our HO scale club layout using the Grand Central Gems long trestle bents.
http://members.cox.net/cacole2/cw3009003.jpg
The inner trestle in this photo uses the Grand Central Gems bents.
The outer trestle was constructed nearly 10 years earlier from two Miami Valley Products kits, but that company is no longer in business.
I bought a bunch and their quality is much better now than when they first started, in fact I could not do that much better from scratch. Their tree quality is average though but got a bunch for background trees.
Ok I’m sold , thats one outstanding trestle I can only imagine how many hours that went into building that
My issue was I have a river that has four bridges crossing it and this one would be the lowest of the four
Th GSG bents are 1-1/2" taller then what I need and I took a piece of extruded foam and bored five holes in it to sink the bent down low enough for my track height. It looked sill as the lower support would be at or under water level. So I didn’t want to cut up what appeared to be some quality stuff. So I decided rather then return it an build some other type of bridge I’ll do the next best thing lower the river bottom an inch and a half and call it done.
Thanks guys
The bottom of the GSG bents can be cut shorter if you very carefully cut with a fine toothed hobby saw while firmly holding the bent in position.
I have also used them in a situation where I really didn’t feel like building 60 of the same trestle bents in one setting. They work well and speed up things qute a bit. It took about two evenings to build this.
I set up a jig on the band saw to cut them to the length I needed before assembly. The track is Micro Engineering Bridge track and was formed and fitted on the layout first, tacked with CA so it did not flex, and then the tresstle was built upside down. 3 strips of 1/16x3/36 spruce were laminated under each rail for the main supports, then the bents were glued to that.
I don’t have a good photo of it installed unfortunately. This is the best I could come up with.
Here is another small trestle built with leftover scraps from that project.
Skipgear,
really nice work, if I were having it go over dry land as you have from what I can see I would do exactly what you did. As a matter of fact just by eye it looks pretty close to what I would have had to cut them down to. I have no problem cutting them with a razor saw and I know directly from the manufacture that if you drill holes and sink them in hydrocal you will make the bridge stronger .
But picture your bents in a river with water up to the level of the cross brace and I think you’ll agree with me.
Hey whats the worse thing that can happen I have to replace some more pink foam?
Well My conclusion was a big two thumbs down on this stuff, I had to rebuild half of the components to make them uniform. The pilings were of varying lengths some as much as 1/8" longer or shorter. That a mile miss in HO not an inch. The bent supports were also in varying lengths and one of the decks ad a wist to it and had to be straighten and planed and sanded to make it look right. If I wanted to do that much work I would have ordered a bunch of wood from Midwest and built one from scratch. I have built a number of Campbell bridges over the years and never encountered anything like this. Just my O/P but they weren’t wrth the money which btw wasn’t cheap. I guess live and learn and look at things much closer before you buy is the lesson here.
All wood trestles I have ever installed, the decking goes in first, then the trestle bents, usually the bottom of the bents are not touching the base of the layout, but hanging in mid air. Lastly I add scenery such as water, dirt rocks etc around the bents to cover the gap. Once the scenery is glued, it is hard as a rock an supprts the trestle. have found this method the easiest instead of having each bent the exact length anchored to the layout base.I believe this is the accepted method by most MRR’s, maybe I’m wrong but viewing the pictures on their website, the bent supports are different lengths, as in cut to size. That’s been my method, using pre-assembled or my own scratch made bents.
JMHO
Yes agreed completely as to both the method of building and “sinking” it in scenery hydrocal what ever and building it up side down of course but the thing that frost me was the complete inconsistency of the parts and the accuracy they were made to. I’ll accept a little variation of course but 1/8" difference in piling lengths is bogus. Why is that not the case with other bridge kits I’ve seen and the cross bracing was off on at least 5 of the bents by 1/16" of an inch form one side to the other so how is that the fault of the modeler who allegedly assembled it wrong. Funny thing is myself and another member built a 210 scale foot curved trestle from scratch using only pictures to go by for the club and we didn’t have any inconsistency what so ever in out parts. If a piling was supposed to be a scale 50’ thats what they were cut to using a North West Short-lines Chopper. Trust me I’m not craftsmen kit builder by no stretch of the imagination but I know how to read a caliper and a ruler. Maybe it’s me but it bothers me that one has to modify or correct supposedly ready to use parts no matter if they are made of wood, styrene or what ever.
I used the N-scale Grand Central decks and bents to construct a short trestle ‘dump-track’ for my HO Champion mine complex. I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out. The ties on the deck are spaced a little too close for what would basically be light mining rail, but I can live with that.
The whole thing went together with gap-filling CA in a little over an hour.
Tom [:)]