I am building a road bridge for my layout with sidewalk with a two or three lane road it also is planned to have working street lights. I have never built a bridge before and could use some tips on building it plus any product recimindations would help.
How long is this bridge going to be? What is it going to cross?
This is a simple, short bridge from a Rix kit.
As I recall, the bridge was actually a bit longer than this, and I cut it down. Rix makes a similar product that’s a lot longer and comes with modern cylindrical piers. The roadway for this bridge kit is just a sheet of styrene, so you could easily replace the one in the kit with a wider piece to add more lanes and sidewalks. Girder supports are provided for the space beneath the bridge, which would give you a place to hide the wires for your streetlights.
This is a construction photo of a short stone bridge I built.
I bought a Woodland Scenics plaster tunnel portal. It was way too thick, so I used it to make a latex rubber mold of the face, and then cast a much thinner piece with just the upper section of the portal. I used another stone wall casting as the inside face of the bridge sides. This is the way it came out, in the upper right of this picture.
I would recommend you start with a photo that you have taken, find in a magazine, download from the internet, etc. Then determine the size you need and see if you can start with any of the available kits. A great place to look for a variety of kits is the Walthers site.
http://www.walthers.com/exec/search?quick=bridge&x=0&y=0
A lot here, but you can refine the search. BTW, my preference is to scratchbuild using a variety of materials. Wood can be a good starting point material as well as styrene.
Richard