Flange Angles
Front
Flange Plate Fillers
Side
Flange Angles
Stiffeners
Stiffeners Interior Bracing
end and intermediate stiffeners. At this point, the plates started to show less flex — the angles were doing their job. The stiffener’s job is to do ex-
actly what their name implies: stiffen the girder structure. There are a few different stiff- ener types; however, the most common I have found for the era I model are shown in the drawings. Using the same angle mate-
rial that I built the flange angles from, I marked the lines on the plates, cut the angle to length, and glued them in place. Once all were in place, I set it aside to dry before working on the in- terior bracing. It is a good idea to keep a small square on hand and use it often to keep your structure plumb and square. I frequently measured each flange location to make sure my con- struction was accurate.
Bracing The interior bracing may look
complex; however, once you have a good idea of all your ma- terials involved, the build moves fairly quickly. Each one of the deck girder’s crossframe bracing consists of two horizontal bars attached to steel plates. The steel plates, in turn, are attached to the beams
at each stiffener. Finally, two ad- ditional bars are attached like an “X” to the top and bottom with a spacing plate at the center where they cross over. It looks compli- cated, but it’s not. To build these components,
I gathered my dimensions, cut my material to length, and cre- ated a simple jig to assemble ev- erything. The jig is nothing more than a piece of 1x4-inch scrap
lumber as the base with strip wood from my scrap box used for the frame. I glued each one together
and allowed them to dry before I attached them to the girder beams. At this point, I did not glue the second cross-member to the bracing yet. Strictly a per- sonal choice, I decided to add them once they were glued to the beams.
Base Coat Once the primer had dried, the entire struc- ture was painted Me- dium Rust as a base coat. This was followed by darker shades of rust to enhance natural shad- ows and create a nice background for the chip- ping paint effects.
AUGUST 2015 71
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