Over the past few weeks, I built a new model railroad module.
It's a tiny trestle bridge, based on plans from the Great Northern Railway. I'm calling it the Nicholson Creek Bridge, because I had hours and hours of old Jenny Nicholson videos on in the background while I was working on this.
(Actually, now that I think about this, I hope this doesn't get read as an insult, because the river here is literally not that deep.)
Anyway, some tech specs: N scale, follows the T-Trak module standard but slightly modified (58 mm distance front to edge of track bed, instead of 38 mm normally), and this time single-track. There are power connections hidden underneath.
The main point is the bridge, of course, a classic american staple. We don't have these kind of wooden bridges in Europe. Although, maybe we should?
The bridge is the main thing here. The main sections ("bents") are constructed out of 2x2 mm balsa wood. The long line on top is 3x3 mm pine, and the reinforcements between the bents are 1x1 mm linden. The track is flex-track from Fleischmann (former Roco) mostly because I could remember their order number the most easily when I went to my local model railroad store (it's 22200). The wood is mostly Amazon, except for the small 1x1 mm profiles, which I got from a local architecture supply store. Next time I'm doing that for all the wood pieces, though I still have plenty of supply left.
I'm really happy with the result, so trust me when I say that I see lots of things I could have done better, I mean this not in a self-deprecating way, but in a "I should build another one of these!" ways.
The most obvious changes would probably be that the 2.0 version of the bridge would be longer, go either through desert or over an actual river (I haven't decided yet, either sounds good), have different track with much wider ties, more reinforcements between the pilers for a more regular look, and I'd color it. But those are all just theoretical concerns at the moment.
(By the way, carrying strength of the bridge is not an issue at all, it's rock-solid with anything I've put on it. I think the 3x3 mm pine stringers would be sufficient already without any of the structure underneath, partly because of the small size and cube square law concerns, partly because I have one long beam under each rail instead of short sections from bent to bent.)
And to close things out, some construction pictures:
Building the structure:
Building the frames:
Building the frames and placing them to test the landscape:
Let me know if you have any questions!
