Wednesday, June 12, 2019

Another curved railroad bridge part 1

It often seems that on a small layout or on a module the track must make curves and if you want to have a bridge scene of any length some of the curve may need to go over the bridge as well.

On the Hot Springs Junction Ntrak module I had this situation on the AsiaNrail connection to the Ntrak mountain division track.  On that one I started with the sides cut from an old Atlas bridge and built a straight bridge wide enough to accommodate the slight curve.  A couple of posts from November of 2012 cover how I built this bridge.
For the rail bridge over the highway I again started with sides cut from old Atlas through girder bridges.  These were glued to a base of tempered hard board which was the same thickness as the cork road bed.  This would be a ballasted deck curved bridge made from two straight sections.
Each of the Atlas bridge sides had to be shortened.  I put the cut off ends in the middle and added a section of .080 x .030 styrene strip between to match the other ribs on the sides.
As this is a two section bridge, it would need support columns where the sections join.  For this I used a pair of used Rix bridge columns salvaged from past projects.
After some cleaning up I spliced the two together into a single unit with 4 columns to match the width of the bridge.  Styrene strip was added to the beam on each side to strengthen the splice.


In this photo the darker line is the center line of the track and the lighter line is the center line of the highway.  Holes were drilled into the module base for the bridge columns along the highway center line.





Here the bridge is set loosely in place on the support column structure.  Everything seems to fit fine and is ready for paint and maybe some weathering.

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