Is an ugly white spot… The bridge is removable as of right now and i cant seem to find what im looking for to go on the area under the rail bridge. Any ideas will be greatly appreciated.
Creek? Dry Creek bed perhaps? Just terrain and a hobo camp? Remnants of a smashed steamer?
I’m sure lots of ideas will pop up here. [yeah]
That just helped me out a great deal.
Now if only i could figure out what to do with that plaster abutment.
Check your PMs. Maybe a bushy/brushy place.
You need some concrete abutments(SP?) under the ends of your bridge. I just bought one of those plate girders yesterday and was wondering if it’s prototypical to have ballast on it or not?
(anyone know?)
I thought the same thing, until i took a ride to see one and sure enough, there is ballast on the edges, such as ive modeled on my girder.
I use sheet styrene to scratch build my abutments and piers.
If you’re not inclined to do that, there are good pier and abutment castings available from Chooch Industries and other manufacturers.
Lee
The (former) NYC West Shore has a double track through girder bridge in Esopus and it is fully balasted as is a smaller bridge just to the north of it. There’s your example. go for it!
Karl
Hello Lee,
I honestly dont know to much about sheet styrene besides the fact that alot of people use it. I would love to give it a try, but im not sure what it is or how i would use it. Any tips?
It’s pretty much plastic. It’s flexible, and acts kind of like cardstock except you can glue it with plastic cement. It’s really cheap at Home Depot or Lowe’s, get some of those “for sale” or “no tresspassing” signs, it’s actually sheet styrene. For one of those, it’s about $2.50 or something.
Under the bridge is…trolls!
[:)]
I use Evergreen sheet. For about $3 you can get three sheets of plain stock, or one sheet of specialty siding like board and batten, clapboard, corrugated or tile. They also have a full selection of strip stock, including tiny strips for trim all the way up to I beams. It’s available at most hobby shops.
When you compare the cost with purchasing kits, you really get motivated to see how creative you can be on all kinds of structures.
Here’s a few more creations:
The concrete retaining wall on the left, made from O scale car siding,
The sidewalk made from tile sheet, the elevated platform is made from Plastruct components, another manufacturer of styrene parts…
Company store, made from clapboard siding…
Engine house - Board and Batten with a corrugated roof…
Lumber yard - Corrugated, strip and Board and Batten for the raised seam roof…
Small freight house - various siding and strip.
The possibilities are almost endless. The best thing to do is start with a small project and build some skills and confidence, and soon there’s nothing you won’t try!
Lee
Great models, Lee.
I carved mine out of a wood block.I’m new at this but I do try to build everything from scratch.bridges to.
Can I offer a different perspective. Given the surrounding terrain, It would make far more sense to remove the bridge and replace it with a fill. Real railroads don’t build bridges for scenic enhancement. They build them to go over something that must run underneath it, such as a creek, a road, or even a deep gorge. Given that what you have is just a small hollow, a real railroad would not go to the expense of building a bridge when a fill is cheaper to build and requires little or no maintenance in the future.
Of course it is your railroad and you can make your own rules, but you are asking what could realisitically go under that bridge when realisitically, there wouldn’t be a bridge there.
That’s a nice looking pier, but with a box truss, you don’t really need it there… The idea of a truss is to provide a longer span with no intermediate supports…
Lee
I was going to say a troll as well but Cp modeller beat me to it.Great little scratch built buildings as well guys [tup]. Here’s another thought to the original question,what about another rail line,you could put a dummy line or one that works underneath depending on the amount of space. I had a similar spot on an old layout and the sceen ddin’t look finished and I didn’t want a water feature so I ran about a foot or so of flex track under the bridge and just sceniced it in .it looked like an old little usd line and I hid it with alot of trees brush etc.
Rob
Yeah, an abandoned track. Why didn’t I suggest it?
WM3798
Everything I’m doing is an exercise in learning in this hobby. I’ve tried foam, plaster cloth, sculptamold, carved wood and alot of other things on my layout maybe next time I’ll get it right. [;)]
Lee S.
Not a problem… as I said, your execution looks great! It’s just a little “over-engineered”[:D]
Pull that pier out and throw some weather on that bridge (as you’ve done very well on the plate girder) and you have a top notch scene!
Lee