Goign to try my hand at scratch building a couple of double track wood bridge structures out of balsa wood. Anyone have good measurements for the bents and deck lumber to keep it close to scale?
I'd suggest that you purchase an N scale ruler, and a dial or digital caliper in thousandths of an inch increments.
While balsa is strong for its weight, basswood might give you better-looking "scale wood". If I were building the bridges, though, my choice would be for strip styrene: readily available in many sizes, with uniform quality and very easy to assemble using solvent-type cement...almost no time needed to create strong, permanent bonds. In N scale, you wouldn't need to add "woodgrain", but could make it look like newly-creosoted wood, or like well-weathered creosoted wood, simply depending on the colour with which you paint it.
Wayne
Do you have a particular prototype in mind? I would just use the standard dimensions of typical prototype threstles, convert them, and build a jig once you have the lengths of the posts, sills, caps, sway braces, girts, and stringers.
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~wkaiser/trestl.html
Hello All,
While Balsa wood might be great for building model airplanes and structures, because of it's lightweight- -I would not recommend it for bridges or other builds that require structural integrity.
If you are intent on using wood I too would recommend Basswood.
Here is a great website for calculating between scale and actual measurements: http://gardenstatecentral.com/scale_calc.html.
What are the dimensions of the bridge you have in mind (scale or actual)?
Along with the above info what will you be spanning: river, creek, wash, dry gulch?
What era- -steam, transition, diesel?
Each type of motive power will put different stresses- -modeled and actual- -on the structure.
How realistic or "prototypical" do you want this structure to represent?
A simple plank with posts will "do the job" but is that what you want to be represented on your pike?
Unfortunately, your inquiry raises more questions than can be simply answered.
Hope this helps.
"Uhh...I didn’t know it was 'impossible' I just made it work...sorry"
Thanks gentlemen.
After posting the question, I found bulk basswood in dowel, sheets, and strips. I have a Blair Line wood trestle that I can use for sizing reference.
I am modeling 1980s era. My larger bridges so far are a combo of CVM truss bridges and a few Atlas girder plate bridges that I have painted and weathered. We have tons of small wood trestle bridges in my region to cross dry drainage, creeks, etc. Just looking to have a variety of structures across the room. I feel I can build several for the cost of a few packaged kits. Yes, time consuming...but more rewarding.
I am going to break down and buy a digital caliper and go to work. Found some great pictures of some commercially available kits that I can use as guides for design. I like the wood because I can use dark stains to create the weathered and creosote soaked look.
Joe
Hi Joe
I found these specs helpful.
When converting prototypical measurements to N scale you just divided by 13.333, converting prototypical feet to N scale inches.
For some reason I make the top cap of my bents 1 1/8 instead of 15/16. Bent specs vary slightly from railroad to railroad. The distance between Sills typically vary from 10 to 14 ft. depending on the height being worked with. Not to say it can't be a little more or less.
Also to save you some trouble, I looked for a long time a while back to find these 1/16 inch .06 dowels for the bent timbers. 1/8 inch are ideal for HO but quite chunky for N.
TF
Thank you Track Fiddler! This is great inforation and will get me off to a great start. The 150 piece pack will probably last me a while:)