I took a coffee break and applied a layer of Sculptamold:
Michael
The Breitenbach - Rosenheim Railroad V3
Personally, I preferred the original (pre paint) arrangement for the bridges, but my question is: What control system are you going to use? My apologies if this has already been asked and answered.
Old Fat Robert
To make my life a bit easier I decided to do some basic landscaping before I mount the bridges in place:
Thanks everybody for their opinion! For now i will keep these bridges as they are, but whenever I build version 6 of the G&AM I will redesign this corner of the layout.
New slogan for the line: "Route of the Skewed Bridges". I previously mentioned that he should make one of his stone bridges a skew bridge like the one here in town, since it should be realtively easy to skew the pattern in software and let the laser cutter do the rest, and now here is a suggestion to skew a girder bridge. There's one of those, or at least there used to be, near the high school I went to, part of the Lehigh Valley's Easton & Northern branch. That one was only single track, but it crossed over the road at an angle so the girders were offset such that the cross beams underneath were parallel to the street.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Hi Michael:
Have you considered skewing the girders on each bridge instead of just having the bridges offset? In other words, build the bridges as parallelograms instead of building them square. That would require you to change the bridge abutments so that they run more parallel to the lower track but I don't think that would be difficult.
Another question I have is why is there a separation between the double track bridge and the single track bridge? If you move the single track closer to the double track you could have just one three track bridge with girders between each of the tracks.
I suppose that if the single track bridge was built at a later date that might justify the two separate bridges.
Bottom line is that skewing the bridge girders might look a lot more interesting.
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
Why not?
Rich
Alton Junction
I've installed the bridges. I'm not sure I really like the way they look...?
I made the bridge abutments:
...and cut the roadbed:
Yes, because with the tracks underneath on a curve, the second (suggested) arrangement leaves more clearance room for the supports under the bridges.
A member of the MRH forum suggested a placement of the bridges like this: Does this look better?
A little bit of paint:
Today I have started to work on the next two bridges:
If you build a yard you have to make sure that trains will fit...
I'm back at work and I'm back working on the layout as well. The yard is complete! It might not be completely prototypical but it sure looks good (to me at least).
I've been stuck in meetings most of the day so all I could accomplish today was to install a single turnout:
Now I have to go see the same people for dinner and unfortunately tomorrow and Wednesday will be much of the same, more meetings, too much food...
The Barnesville yard is getting closer to completion as I've added more track today:
I made a little bit of progress again at Barnesville:
ROBERT PETRICK Hey Michael- In addition to Rich's question . . . There appears to be 14 or 15 tracks in this yard. I can easily imagine 20 or 30 engines idling on warm standby. How do you plan to power the tracks? What size buss? How many busses? How many and spacing of feeders? Robert
Hey Michael-
In addition to Rich's question . . .
There appears to be 14 or 15 tracks in this yard. I can easily imagine 20 or 30 engines idling on warm standby. How do you plan to power the tracks? What size buss? How many busses? How many and spacing of feeders?
Robert
Robert,
I'm using AWG 14 as bus wire for the layout. N scale locomotives don't draw that much compared to H0 so that's good enough. Every yard or station on the layout is a power district with it's own booster.
As to feeder wires I typically feed at least every second piece of track which in the past has always worked very well for me.
richhotrain Michael, remind me, how are you planning to operate all those turnouts? Rich
Michael, remind me, how are you planning to operate all those turnouts?
Rich,
I'm using tortoise switch machines and they will be DCC controlled so I can run trains automatically. What kind of manual control I will have I haven't decided yet (toggle switches, pushbuttons, something else?).
LINK to SNSR Blog
A little, he says, as the yard doubles in size
I had an important meeting this afternoon so there wasn't as much time as usual but still a little bit of track was laid:
JoeinPA Michael What are you going to use to control the turnouts at Barnesville? Joe
What are you going to use to control the turnouts at Barnesville?
Joe
Good question. In the end I want to be able to run the layout automated to some degree. That means using decoders for the switch machines. Switch machines will be tortoises because I have a lot of them.
Again, more track at Barnesville:
hon30critter michaelrose55 I'm not the best when it comes to wiring... I suspect that you are being too modest. Dave
michaelrose55 I'm not the best when it comes to wiring...
I suspect that you are being too modest.
No, just honest...
michaelrose55I'm not the best when it comes to wiring...
And more track again: