Another big one Building a large trestle/Bob Walker
large, empty, dry basement in a new house is a truly awesome rush. In August of 1996, I stood at the base of the stairs looking out at 3,000 square feet of emptiness, save for a double row of support columns. No matter, I told myself, I’ll design around them such that they become walls. I was only 52-years-old, and considered myself in my prime as a model railroad- er. I had several layouts under my belt, so I was not the least bit intimidated by the prospect of a 20-30,000 hour “pro- ject.” I should have run screaming from the lower level of the house, canceled the sale, and bought a smaller home. With all of that experience, I was still clueless as to what lay ahead. As I have written in this column many times, I al- ways seem to learn things the hard way. Fast forward to the turn of the centu-
A
ry. The ensuing four years had seen about 3,000 hours committed to the lay- out, and the progress was visible to the naked eye. Two thirds of the proposed layout was more or less built. In other words, the room was prepped with drop ceiling, ample lighting, and painted backdrop (completed prior to benchwork so I could reach it). The benchwork was in and most of the mainline was laid, wired, and in operation. I had a pretty good work routine established whereby I worked on all the aspects of the hobby in rotation, never letting any one phase drive me “bonkers.”
Getting that main in operation in- volved a lot more than just roadbed and handlaid track. In their 167 miles, the Rio Grande Southern had a like number of trestles, some fairly small, and some that could only be called huge. As the main was laid, when I came to where I needed a trestle, I stopped laying track and headed to the workbench. As the trackage pro- gressed, I got fairly adept at building trestles for On3. I made a sizeable number of styrene jigs to aid the process, and by that, I mean accelerate it. I rarely council speed in these writ- ings, but avoiding repetitive busy work is kind of a no-brainer. When I wearied of laying track, like when my right hand seized up like a blown big block Chevy, I would rest at the workbench and build a structure or five. Other times I would make some progress on scenery, climb under the layout and do a little wiring, or even work on a piece of rolling stock. You get
76
Scratchbuilder’s Corner
the picture: there were literally hun- dreds of such projects that needed at- tention. I admit here that as time wore on I was becoming a little intimidated by the task I had assigned myself. Not that it was becoming “work” mind you; it’s just that the magnitude of the en- deavor was more and more apparent. When I hit the town of Ophir (in my humble opinion, one of the most mod- eled towns in model railroading), a town nestled at the end of a long thin canyon, I had to stop to build two tres- tles. The first was a 100-foot shortie and only 20 feet or so tall. It was on a curve, but, all in all, pretty simple and quick. The second one was the exact op- posite. This monster was almost five hundred feet long, over one hundred feet high, and curved at one end. I was still looking at over 100 structures to scratchbuild, a like number of cars to build, hundreds of feet of track to lay (with maybe 30 more turnouts in there), a mile more of wire, and anoth- er 800 square feet of mountain scenery
PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR
to construct. That ten-foot (actual) model was just too much at the time, so I chickened out and made a selectively compressed five-foot long model as (I told myself) a stand-in until I built “the real thing.” As much as that dinky lit- tle trestle bothered me, I was loathe to replace it. It sat there bugging me for several years.
So I built this little stand-in and got on with the building of the model rail- road. As I said, it bothered me, but ob- viously it did not yet bother me enough. Fast forward another six years, to 2006. Now semi-retired (down to two days a week), I had a lot more time to work on the layout. Things now progressed at a rate more than double what had gone before. Before I knew it, all the structures were built, all the scenery was in, and all the track was laid and wired. Gulp! The doggone thing was done. It is now 2009, and that little trestle at Ophir is really bugging me even more. I still had all those jigs from years gone by, I had the time to do the deed, and my wood sup- ply was all that needed help. Hey, Northeastern, I’m the reason for the ¹/₄″×¹/₄″ stripwood sales uptick in Sep- tember of 2009. Considering those I built for others, this would be my 14th trestle. The biggest, by far, but in other
The author had built a number of trestles previously, so the proper jigs for the bents were ready to go for the big trestle. With the ¹/₄″ stripwood cut and assembled, the bents were laid flat on the workbench, and weights were placed on top until the glue dried.
FEBRUARY 2014
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100