Elevated transit line thingy

[Anonymous]

I want to have a layout with an elevated line for a trolley or passenger train system. any ideas of how to do this?

[Anonymous]

Go to www.walthers.com do a search for Viaducts, and you'll see some was to elevate the train in a city.

Jay.

[Anonymous]

I'd suggest using a mixture of brass and plastic (styrene) sections to assemble the structure you want - If I ever get around to building my planned section of the NYC High Line I'll have to make some elevated line. If you use all-brass construction you can use solder to join the pieces together, unfortunately it'll be very heavy and very expensive.

[ndbprr]

Look for articles in the early 80's about constructing an elevated line. One person made a master and then cast all the parts in epoxy to do it. I want to say Eric Broom or Vroom wrote it but I just can't remember. Old age you know.

[davekelly]

This link is to a web article on building a New York City elevated structure. It's in O, but I'm sure it can be modified for other scales. The structure described in the article looks pretty good and the construction of it seems to be straight forward although I have not yet tried it. Of course the Micro Engineering city viaduct kits look good, although they seem to be getting harder and harder to find. Has ME discontinued making them?

http://home.att.net/~sctransit/ModelEl.htm

[leighant]

I once built a model of the older part of the Berlin Stadtbahn (S-Bahn). Brick retaining walls and steel girder girder bridges across streets. I had a 27" x 34" layout with a double track mainline for Deutsche Bundesbahn freight trains, and a double track elevated line running diagonally across the scene. Needless to say, it was a non-running scenic feature, but one I thought necessarily to get that true Berline Lufte.

That's probably not the kind of elevated line you meant, was it?

[Jetrock]

No, that's pretty similar in fact--American elevated lines tend to be passenger lines, running electric trains (or, before the advent of trolleys, small steam locomotives) through urban areas. There were some elevated freight lines too, to keep freight trains from smushing motorists and pedestrians in busy cities.

Making one would involve building a trestle superstructure (out of wood, styrene or brass) to hold up the entire layout. It'd be complex but it could be done--most of the examples I've heard of are small shelf layouts except for the giant model of Chicago at the Museum of Science & Industry. It could be done, I'm sure--rolling stock could be modified from existing trolley stuff (I suppose that Bachmann PCC's or IHC's Boeing LRV's might be a good choice for 30's-50's or modern era, respectively.) or scratchbuilt--anyone willing to build all that superstructure is probably a fair hand with scratchbuilding! I wish you luck!

[DSchmitt]

I believe Spokane Washington had an elevated line with freight spurs to the second or third floor of their customers buildings.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by DSchmitt

I believe Spokane Washington had an elevated line with freight spurs to the second or third floor of their customers buildings.

This sounds remarkably similar to the NYC High Line (a freight elevated line in NYC). Look on www.oldnyc.com for loads of photos of the line and a virtual guided tour. The High Line ran through buildings to allow goods to be unloaded.

[jrbarney]

Commander,
Just did a search at this site's Index of Magazines, using the keyword "elevated." The search found 35 articles using that term. In particular the articles by Eric Bronsky appear to be the most pertinent to your question.
You should be able to get copies of those articles either from the NMRA's Kalmbach Memorial Library or from Customer Service at this site.
Bob

[Anonymous]

Thanks everybody.