Has anyone tried building one of this company’s trestles in any scale ?
Yes. I am building 2 of the 36" wood trestles (straight or curved). Nothing special. It’s just bundled wood strips of various dimensions that you have to stain, cut to length and glue together. They include a template for the bents, some plastic fire barrel stuff and a basic guide. A little pricey, but convenient, and I am enjoying it.[:)]
Thanks for taking the time to reply. How is the quality of the wood and how would you rate the template for building your bents ? Thanks Michael
I used their thirty six inch trestle kit. The template they include is more of a diagram and is really just to show you how a trestle is typically constructed. You will probably have to make your own jig to hold the bents while the glue dries. I built one bent by hand and then built a jig on a piece of hard board so I could copy the dimensions. Once they were built, I trimmed each bent to the finished height. I liked that they included the proper sized wood for each section you need to build. The wood is a good quality basswood I believe. I would stain it before you build. Otherwise any glue that covers the wood will not take the stain. Since I didn’t use the whole kit I had a ton of wood leftover. To me it was a good investment so I didn’t have to guess which sized “lumber” for each section.
Here is a shot of part of my trestle while I was constructing the scenery around it.
Here it is installed without the trees.
This is the almost finished product.
Thanks for the great pictures Corey and the use of the instructions is much appreciated also. Michael
I haven’t done one of their trestle’s, but recently completed JV Models’ HO lumber Load. It says it builds loads for two or three standard gauge cars. I coaxed loads for four narrowgauge cars out of mine over two days of building. Since it was fresh lumber loads I was modeling, no staining or other prep.
The wood was very nice quality. The instructions noted that some of the cut lumber provided for the loads might be of lesser quality. I did notice a very occasional flaw, but for me that was good, based on the practices I was modeling. The fact that there was this note leads me to believe that JV probably uses first grade wood in items like the trestle kit where dimensions/quality is more critical and that even if it’s not first grade wood in the lumber load kit, JV’s wood is still darn good stuff.
Corey;very nice before,after,and inbetween shots …Jerry