A daily updated blog typed by someone with painty hands, oil under his fingernails and the smell of solder in his nostrils who likes making all sort of models and miniatures. And fixing things.
Thursday, September 01, 2011
Bridge building
The more observant amongst you will have spotted that I appear to be building a fairground ride rather than a model railway. Track floating through mid-air looks exciting but in real life, isn't a good idea. Passengers get nervous and you tend to find the rolling stock doesn't last very long.
My bridge is in fact a curved viaduct. Lots of looking through books and surfing the web made me hopeful that I could go for a very simple design without leaving for cloud cuckoo land. Big, fat girders with no sides was what I wanted and that's what I've built.
Box girders were made up from plasticard, I know you can buy these things but it doesn't seem extravagant for such a simple job. Initially they were all the same but then I laid them on the track and worked out where the joins and therefore the angled ends needed to be. All the pencil marks on the baseboard shows you that I took several attempts to decide exactly what I wanted, this isn't just a technical decision, the supports would look prettier if evenly spaced and with the middle one in the centre of the gap. This isn't just engineering, it's art !
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