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I built my piers and abutments with two helps: Bridge and Trestle Handbook by Paul Mallory and studying numerous bridge photos from protoype magazines. If you have a heavy looking bridge, then a heavy foundation is required. Light for light, medium for medium. I kind of used a rule of thumb that the top of a pier should be at least 50%, up to 100% wider than the bridge pedestal, and for an abutment, at least 25%, up to 50% wider than the pedestal. The pedestal should be at least 1' from the side edge. My piers are sloped, I used a 15:1 ratio, for example, if the pier is 10' wide at the top, 15 feet below the top, the pier is 1 foot wider on each side (12' wide total). Visually, to me anyway, this creates an obvious slope, but it doesn't eat up real estate. My abutments are not sloped, and I too, bring scenery up to cover the shims. If I chose to model a sloped abutment, I would build a non-sloped track support, and then build a slop to the support. If you model a sloped abutment, the slope should be the same angle of the soil or rock that the right of way has just gone through - gentle for soil, gentle or steep for rock. You could also just let the soil slope naturally around a straight abutment if turbulent water isn't near by, or put large riprap around the base of an abutment to protect it. There are a lot of options, because man's imagination has always tried to outdo nature. Happy modeling.
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