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Double track wood trestle

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  • Member since
    March 2023
  • 2 posts
Double track wood trestle
Posted by Jstod on Tuesday, March 21, 2023 5:55 PM

As I'm building my layout I'm plan a curved wood trestle for the corner of the L shape layout. I was wondering if anyone had or knew of where I could locate a design for the bents.  It will be a double track trestle that will stand at least 24" tall and traverse a 90degree turn. 

  • Member since
    December 2015
  • From: Shenandoah Valley
  • 9,094 posts
Posted by BigDaddy on Wednesday, March 22, 2023 11:38 AM

Welcome to the forum.  Your initial posts are delayed in moderation.

Kalmbach has a bridge and tunnel book

Ken Patterson has a video on building a trestle bridge.  This is a promo for it.  I believe he shows how to make a jig for the bents.

 

Henry

COB Potomac & Northern

Shenandoah Valley

  • Member since
    January 2019
  • 158 posts
Posted by wolfman hal on Wednesday, March 22, 2023 6:42 PM

I have built two hugh wood  Trestles. They are both the highlight of the layout. All of the dimentions for the bent and everything else came from Kalmback Bridges & Trastles. I think it must have been a first editon publication. The cover has a four engine train coming out of a tunnel across a trestle and a Santa fe moving under it. I would hope that the new additions would have it.  In my  looking for the original drawing I found the there was never a prototype ever built. I created a jig for the bents and increased the width to include the second track. I made single bents to span both tracks. There was a site that you can download the mag if you cannot find a plan. Track was hand  laid. 

  • Member since
    September 2003
  • 21,669 posts
Posted by Overmod on Wednesday, March 22, 2023 7:40 PM

We had a thread here in 2006 that indicated SP had a double-track wood trestle plan circa 1912-1913.  There was a contemporary double-track trestle west of Sacramento that was progressively improved 'over the years' -- no one was sure if it was built to the published plans, but it was a ballasted-deck structure like them.

The same thread indicated that one of the BNSF transcons had a couple of examples of double-track wood structure, one including a skew highway crossing, but was unsure if the structure hadn't been replaced.

All the double-track trestles I see pictures of have the two tracks on separate sets of stringers or girders, and many of them show intermediate crossbracing of the bent structure to handle the offset load.  It might be fun to see if any of the Haupt bridges were double-track construction... now that would be an interesting thing to scratchbuild...

  • Member since
    August 2006
  • 1,519 posts
Posted by trainnut1250 on Thursday, March 23, 2023 2:43 PM

My Buddy Gary Schrader built a double track wooden trestle.

See this link: https://oscalekings.org/WP/gary-shrader/
Scroll to picture thirteen.

The kalmbach book is a good place to start. there are also SP standards book that have dimensions for trestles. I’m pretty sure there is a drawing of a double track trestle with callouts for dimensions etc. in one of those books.

have fun,

Guy

 

 

 

see stuff at: the Willoughby Line Site

  • Member since
    March 2023
  • 2 posts
Posted by Jstod on Thursday, March 23, 2023 7:14 PM

That is a beautiful layout that trestle is exactly the type I'm going for just a lot bigger haha

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