I have been working on my layout, and started the process of building my river, now instead of using the paint to get depth, i used talus, my prototype has rocky rivers, and alot of sandstone. Talus was the only way to get this effect. In the pictures the water looks like a brown stripe, thats where the water line is, i’m going to add a few more layers. Now For this river i will need a bridge for the trains to cross over, i notched the sides out of the ez track to make the bridge. I need to add a deck to the brigde but i’m not sure on what to build it out of. I’m thinking to build it out of wood but i’m not sure if that would fit the prototype.
Aaahhh! Little bridges, hard to have too many of them.
I suggest a wooden trestle with a ballasted deck. Since it lies over a creek, I recommend concrete piers for the bents. An alternative is a couple of “I” girders resting on cement abutments, again supporting a ballasted deck.
A Girder bridge is a pre-built structure of limited dimensions, that is hoisted in place on (often) cement abutments, as is ongoing in BNSF’s Abo Canyon route. Note the track can curve but the bridge spans cannot.
Those huge girder bridges aren’t appropriate. What we have here is essentially an open culvert. He doesn’t have much vertical clearance between water and track levels. Anything much thicker than an “I” beam or wooden stringers would be too much. A girder bridge would make it a dam.
Agreed. His wooden ‘stick model’ looks too long for a standard 9" Atlas. Maybe not. The bridge section goes on top of it’s piers. I’m judging by the distances on the stick in pictures 2/3, not the 2 1/2" pictures.
Micro-Engineering has longer spans (up to100’ via Walthers).
Great idea for a solution.I;ve often done bridges with a baseless piece strung between two based pieces, but your idea is so much more solid and not resting on the track joiners.
I think what would work for you is simply Kitbashing. You might be able to find Evergreen I Beam strips one scale up from what you have, and bonding a flat piece of styrene to the back of it for a girder impression. And you can cut ti to whatever size you need.
EDIT:
Okay, that’s noting like what I had in mind. But is that getting to what you want?
That looks to be right, the wooden bridge is a little to old for my modern layout, The eurpeon bridge, is way too big, i have about 2in’s for a bridge, the styrene sounds good for what i need, thanks for all the comments
just curious if you have a shot of a wooden bridge with a balasted deck, not sure how thats done, the ballast on the deck that is… I need a short bridge, I’m opting to go with a small wooden one over a small salt marsh, just started looking into it though… Thanks, Pat
While I’m sure that there’s a prototype for everything, you’d have quite a stretch to find a wooden trestle with a ballasted deck. The main reason for ballast, aside from holding the track in place, is to provide for drainage away from the ties.
On most wooden bridges (again, I’m careful not to say all!) the cross ties are bolted to the trestle structure, so there’s no need for ballast to hold the track in place, and the bridge would be in open air with nowhere for water to collect, so ballast wouldn’t be needed for drainage either.
A ballasted deck is typically only going to found on a masonry bridge, and at times on a steel bridge. Many wood decks on steel bridges were replaced with a concrete bed with ballast as a fire prevention measure during steam days.
I have to vehemently disagree. My observations conclude that ballasted decks are most common on both steel and wooden bridges/trestles for many decades, and we don’t even have any of those primitive masonry railroad bridges out here.
Hi Tj: Lot’s of good suggestions, so far. Here’s one more. Maybe instead of a bridge, you could just use a masonry, stone or concrete, culvert. Maybe something like this:
Clearly we have a situation where geography will play into the prototype! Back here in the east, we get rain and snow with a bit more frequency than you folks out there in the west, so we’re going to build our bridges with that in mind. We also have fewer earthquakes and volcanoes, and we built many of our railroads 50 years before the west was invented, so yes, there are more masonry structures.
I’d like to see a picture of a wooden bridge with a ballasted deck. As I said, I’m sure there’s a prototype for everything, so I don’t doubt that such an animal exists. It just seems to me that from an engineering standpoint, a wooden trestle would have to be pretty beefy just to hold the dead load of the ballast, much less the live load of a moving train. I also wonder if the structure that holds the ballast in place is wood or concrete, in which case there’s even more weight for the structure to bear.
Okay, that’s noting like what I had in mind. But is that getting to what you want?
