The Trestles

In order to cross Cedar Creek, I actually needed some trestles.  I built two different types, based on information in my old copy of "Bridges and Buildings for Model Railroads" and photos of various bridges in my volumes of "The RGS Story."   Although the latter are about a narrow gauge line, they contain valuable details of bridge and trestle construction that are essentially identical to contemporary standard gauge structures.

The only commercial parts in the trestle models are some nut-bolt-washer castings and Campbell bridge ties.  The wood was stained with thinned acrylic craft paint, mostly just diluted black, or diluted India ink.  Both give similar results.  Basic material dimensions are taken directly from the above sources, with some wood re-sized as necessary to accommodate what's available for anything larger than 12X12 (from the basswood rack at the Michael's craft store), or odd numbers of inches (e.g. I can't find a commercial 3X10 and don't want to cut my own).

One trestle is a typical-looking structure that's about 60 feet in length: 

Since the bents will sit in the creek bed, I added "concrete" footings (painted stripwood) to keep them from rotting from exposure to the water.  I haven't decided 100% on how the abutment at right will be finished.  Right now I'm leaning toward using cribbing.  The left side will rest on rock fill material.  I'll finish the abutments once this structure is installed.

And now for something completely different:

The angle where the right-of-way intersects the creek at the other crossing inspired me to create the above bridge using concrete piers.  These are cast in plaster from a homemade styrene mold I assembled many years ago.  I figured this arrangement would be less susceptible to washing out from the stream flow not being entirely parallel to the piers.  The approach fills for this span are taller than the one shown earlier, and received taller abutments.  Although the total span here isn't much longer at about 65 feet, the spacing between vertical supports is greater.  Stringers are approximately 8X24 as opposed to 8X16, and there are four on each side instead of three.  This bridge was influenced by drawings of RGS bridge 64A in Burns Canyon near Rico.

Test Fit

Time to temporarily fit the trestles into the scene to make sure they're working out as intended:

Here's one...

...and the other.  Fill material, painted track, ballast, etc. are still to come.  In this view you can see some talus I'm checking out on the canyon wall as well.  It shouldn't need much dry-brushing to get a good color match.

Is It Curved?

Rob,

Is the trestle curved (it appears to be)?  If so, did you do several short tangents to accomplish this?

They both look very nice.  I'll need a couple short trestles eventually on my line, and these would be good candidates.

-Jack

Wow, that first picture...............

.....................looks like a disaster for the train crew in the making.  It sadly reminds me of the worst train wreck in my career as a Claim Agent for Amtrak in Williston, VT on July 7, 1984.  5 people died as a result of a wall of water from 5 broken beaver dams washing out a large culvert leaving the rails hanging just like your picture.  The first locomotive made it over but the train went down into the opening with the sleepers piling one on top of the other.  We were there for over 2 weeks attending to passenger needs. 

I like what you have done here with the trestle looking like it belongs there.  Good job.

Peter

Re: Jack

Yes and yes.  I assembled two sets of stringers for each one, and cut them into straight sections with mitered ends.  The joints are visible in the photos just above the bent/pier centerlines.

Nice!

Re: BillMichaels

You're right - I need to do that.  The photos really show that this weathering step hasn't been completed yet.

Nice work

Have you tried to find the 3" X 10" at Northeastern scale lumber?   http://www.northeasternscalelumber.com/

They make and carry the 3" X 10" lumber in HO scale as well as many other standard lumber sizes in "N" "HO" "S" "O" and "G" scales

I order from them 3 or 4 times a year and it usually takes about 8 to 10 day to receive the products from them because I have it shipped USPS ground but if your in a hurry they do offer faster shipping alternatives. They make some of the nicest Scale lumber I have ever used and the sizes are consistent from order to order.

Download their product catalog to see their products.

Dan

Good Looking Bridges

I have the Bridges and Buildings book too, so I know exactly where you are coming from with this. Good work!

George

Re: Dan

My LHS is a Northeastern dealer and didn't have any, so I've been using 2X10.  It's good to know the 3X10 and 3X12 stock is available. Some plans show those sizes for cross-bracing on the bents. 

More Progress

I got the trestles installed and built some cribbing to support the abutment of one of them as I indicated above.

The cribbing was assembled from Kappler bridge ties.  Any exposed cut edges get treated with more stain.  Since the interior if this thing will be completely hidden, there was no point in building the rest of the prototype's interlocking cribwork inside it.

Here's the cribbing installed under the trestle.  It will be filled with dirt and rock when I build up the fill around the roadbed.  I also need to add another tie to fill that obvious gap before ballasting.  Note how the cribbing extends all the way to the cliff at left, which seemed logical to keep the creek from undercutting the right of way (it flows left to right in this view).  More rock/rip rap material will be piled there as well.

basswood

If you contact Junior(Ed Seay) at MAL hobby shop 108 S. Lee St. Irving Tx. (972) 438-9233 they can supply any size or special shape you may need or want. They hand cut balsa on site and have been for years. You can get a sheet of balsa so thin you can place it on a book and read the page through it. Their wood is well known in model airplane circles. They also carry model trains. When I lived in Irving I spent a lot of time there and learned quite a lot there. Give them a try I am sure you can get the size(s) of wood you need. They do ship world wide.

                                         Laurel Line and Lackawanna Dan

Fill 'er Up

With the cribbing complete, I decided to start filling around the trestle with rocks and sand.

Compare this view to the earlier photos showing the original spline roadbed.  The goal of this exercise is to make it appear that the railroad piled up fill material to support its track, and that all of it was constructed around and on top of the existing landscape.  I used some decomposed shale with varying sizes of particles for most of the fill, along with sand that's a similar color to represent finer material.  I then added some darker gray sand for the compacted fill (old ballast, cinders, and whatever else) that exists just below the ballast which will be applied last.

Here's the opposite end of the trestle showing the sidehill grade on its side of the canyon.  This same general theme will continue all the way to the second trestle just out of view to the right.

I'll add a lot more fill and talus before gluing any of this in place.

Still More Dirty Work

I finished adding fill material and talus to the Cedar Creek trestle scene for now.

I added the wing walls around the structure above, and built up the creek bed around the piers.  It's becoming more apparent where the "original" stream channel would have been, and how it was altered to get the rail line through.

Here's a look at the whole length of the scene.  It's time to glue everything in place and move on to:

• Dry-brushing the talus to better match the plaster rocks.
• Base ground cover on the adjacent hillsides.
• Adding guard rails to both trestles.
• Painting the track.
• Vegetation.
• Ballast.

Modeling water will come much later - after the forum challenge timeframe is up.

Rob I'm going to make a call...

This is the most realistic canyon/river scene I have seen to date since starting out in model railroading!  You have an incredible gift, the ability to layer the elements with that entire scene is absolutely amazing.

Even though it isn't finished yet you can see that this is going to be a front page scene for MRH & MR.  I really hope that you have taken multiple photos and video of this scene, and will produce a video in conjunction with MRH.  This is going to be one very hard to beat scene and model railroad, and I will rate it up there with the big guns...

Keep up the outstanding work Rob!

Jas...

Re: Jason

Thank you sir!

Rob something I do to make timbers and lumber my needed sizes

I normally buy direct from Northeastern due to the LHS don't ever have enough stock on hand. What I do is Buy 10 to 20 bags of each 1X2, 1X3, 1X4, 1X6, 1X8. 1X10, 1X12 and the same with 2X2 thru 2X12. With these I will make my own timbers when I can't find odd sizes or non stocked sizes of lumber. Building the Rio Grande Southern I have 40 Plus timber trestles and bridges to build between Ridgway and Rico that range from 20 feet long and 5 feet tall to 300 feet long and 100 plus feet tall.

I love Timber bridge construction and yours are an excellent example of Model Railroad timber bridges.

Keep up the fine work.

Dan

When I Grow Up...

...I want to model just like you. Rob, I am hanging on your every picture. Awesome!

Very, VERY nice

I love this scene and when it has "water" it will be fantastic! Like Alan, I want to model like you when I grow up! 

Kind Words

Thanks for following along, and for the words of encouragement.

Beautiful Work Rob

However...

I'm wondering if the bridge ties shouldn't be more uniform in color?

My reasoning being that the bridge is a single unit, built in a relatively short time span and as such would age more uniformly. Also, the fact that bridge ties, being more difficult to replace than regular ties, one would think they would be replaced as a group (perhaps even the whole deck of the bridge), rather than being replaced one or two at a time.

Of course, I could be totally out to lunch!

George

Tie Color

Interesting question George. You're not out to lunch at all.

I've been looking at a lot of bridge and trestle photos lately, and I'm afraid the amount of variation...varies.  Some bridges seem quite uniform, while others aren't.  Branchline examples (and these are on a one train a day branch) often exhibit the most variation, but some others on mainlines were quite varied as well.

Here's the former SP truss span at Palisade, NV, enlarge and you'll see quite a bit of variation in the ties http://www.rgusrail.com/album/nvpalisade/bridges_03.jpg.  This is the trestle the UP still uses to access the cement plant at Devil's Slide (Croydon), UT http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=505867, although only the ends of ties are visible in the photo.

I can also point to others where the coloration is more even, again both on branches and mains, and I'm not entirely certain whether the natural variation from staining the ties will raise eyebrows or not.  Note that the flextrack through the scene is not painted yet, and will be much closer in color to the wood ties when finished, plus the final weathering will most likely change things again. 

More to consider

While it is not a trestle, the Utah Central's Pegram Truss bridge on the former UP Evona branch shows similar uniform (or nearly so) weathering of the ties. http://www.historicbridges.org/utah/pegram/little_img_0575.jpg

BTW I absolutely love that bridge and am planning to include it on my layout.

George

Ballast

For my next act, I painted the track and added ballast.

The track color is Americana "Asphaltum" craft acrylic (a dark grayish brown), with some dry-brushing of "Driftwood."  I also touched up a few replacement ties with straight black, later toned down with some more Asphaltum.  This is a branch that sees only one train a day, so I didn't want the track to look too intensively maintained.  I had previously built up the fill material so the ballast wouldn't look too tall like the mainline.

Ballast is "Blended Limestone" from MRH sponsor Scenic Express (their own brand).  It's a natural stone based material, or at least behaves like one, and stays in place nicely when gluing.  For glue I used Elmer's wood glue thinned about 2:1 with water.

Once everything dried, I started dry-brushing the talus and fill material with the colors used on the plaster rockwork, as described in my article in the January, 2011 issue of MRH.  More to come...