A friend of mine is building a model of the Manayunk bridge over the Schuylkill (SKOO-kull) River in PA near Philadelphia.
What’s really interesting is HOW he’s building it - out of pink insulation foam board.
He says the board cuts well on a bandsaw, and sands nicely too, resulting on a cement-like texture.
What gets me is how fine some of the details are. Look at the small edging along the main arches. The ROW support arches also came out very nicely.
I didn’t think you could do that with pink foam! Subroadbed, sure, but this?
I have been practicing making all sorts of things out of foam. The bridge pier is a first attempt, done while watching the hockey game. I do much better when I give it my full attention. Distracted carving.[(-D]
Mark, I would give him full props for that level of craftsmanship. I have never seen anything quite like it. It might even be a first in the hobby for all we know.
Please pass on my compliments to him. I’d like to see more updates, from both of you, please.
That does work good. My highway overpass is foamed based, but it is nothing in elaborate detail as this is, mine is just your basic modern concrete structure. I covered mine with drywall mud, and painted it, to give it more of a concrete look.
A while back, on a discussion in here about carving rocks from foam, I got carried away searching and looking, and you would not believe some of the stuff that crafters, artist, modelers, (including war gaming) are carving and building with foam!
Thanks for posting this Mark - I built the bridges (am stioll completing them)
More detail on the bridge - the supports are wood so they have more strength. The groves were cut on my small table saw with a spacing jig I rigged up, one thin saw blade width cut. I’ve added some additional detail to the main supports so it will look more like the bridge. The three small arched indents and the molding below them
The deck is homasote, which I use to support all my track. I mitered the edge and just added a fillet of paintable caulking to mimic the prototype. the trim on the arches is carefully cut from foam (again on my small table saw) then glued onto the main arches. The main arch is cut from a large piece of foam and then the smaller arches were made with a 1.5" hole saw and the straights were cut on the band saw from the arched open end to tangent with the hole. then the main arch pieces was glued to the smaller arches.
I found a few things
can’t use contact cement. and
can’t use super glue.
I wound up using wood glue on the foam board which takes some time to dry so pins helped hold detail in place.
the ten arch bridge is 150 ft long. There are also two other sized spans 6 and 8 arches (90 and 120 ft) I am making all three sizes. and will have 4 when complete.
I drew out the arches at full HO scale on paper then pinned to the foam board and cut out the main arch. then marked the center point of each arch and used a hole saw to cut the small arches.
My bridge is only 1 track wide (1.5" foam board) with a 2.5" deck.
Nice work. Regular latex caulk also works good for “glueing”, and also takes a while to dry, but, depending on the peice, sometimes you can keep building and adding other parts.
