Things have progressed on my bascule bridge build for the layout to the point where I have the main subassemblies together enough to start fitting the opening to hold the bridge. Great! Fantastic! I can make intelligent and accurate measurements and move forward some more!
Uh, how should the base of this bridge be secured to the layout? I mean, I have it balanced well and it will sit in the open or closed position with no problems, but certainly others don't just use the track to hold it in place. What are the solutions you guys have used and how well have they worked?
Good Luck, Morpar
The pair of A-Frames has four "feet" that I have glued to the layout surface and that is sufficient to hold the bascule bridge place in either an up or down position. You can see the feet of the outermost bascule bridge in this photo of my layout.
Rich
Alton Junction
richhotrain The pair of A-Frames has four "feet" that I have glued to the layout surface and that is sufficient to hold the bascule bridge place in either an up or down position. You can see the feet of the outermost bascule bridge in this photo of my layout. Rich
Did you add something to make the "feet" larger or is it included in the kit? All I saw in the parts of the kit are 2 castings which fit the ends of the bridge in addition to the part which holds the switch. More surface area makes lots of sense in this case!
When I built my current layout five years ago, the three bascule bridges were sitting about 0.08" lower than the adjacent layout surfaces. I used some pieces of styrene sheet to vertically align the bridges so that the track was a continuous level surface. I glued those pieces to bridge abutments and then glued the feet of the A-Frames to those styrene pieces. Here are some close-up photos: