Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Yadkin River Bridge, Pt. 2

When I first made up my mind to build this layout, I had the winter to work on things before starting construction in May 2007. I realized some of the first items I would need then tracklaying started would be the bridges and trestles.

I had never scratchbuilt anything before and started with a Plastruct single bridge kit. I planned to use it for 1 of the 3 Flat Swamp bridges needed on the WSS. After it was together, I bought the supplies to make the other 2.

The next job was to attempt the Yadkin River trestle and Old Hwy 29 bridges. I took plenty of pictures and from a known measurement, scaled everything from the computer screen. After a couple of weeks, I had the 685' long bridge done and went to work on one of the Hwy 29 bridges. By the time it was done and mounted, I started work on the building.

The Yadkin section was mounted in the benchwork in September 2007 and track connected, but was never finished. Last week, while off work for the New Year I made up my mind to try and finish the section. The first item was to finish the guard rails on the highway bridge. After that, I added in new shoreline and trees.
I built 2 simple bridges for I-85 and created the rock outcroppings at Old Salisbury Road using some plaster castings I had laying around.

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