More Bridge Work

Well what has happened in the last week?  I received a phone call on Friday night from a Club member asking how my decodering up of his locos was going.  Whoops!  I forgot to do the last two of his six locos - I could not get motivated.  So after I hung up the phone I installed the decoder into one of his Jumbos and on Saturday morning before I left for the Club, I did the last loco also a Jumbo.  So in total I decodered up 2 x 80's, 2 x 421's and 2 x 442's. 

 

On my way to the Club via the local hobby shop I picked up my Central Valley kit of webbed girders so I could progress my bridge over the Richmond River. During the week, I was lucky enough to convince the boss to pick up two spray cans of grey primer from one of the local cheap $2 shops, although the tins of spray paint where about $4.  I think Supercheap Auto had similar cans on special this weekend for cheaper.  I realised the need for spray paint during the week when I thought I might be able to spray paint my girder bridge one night after I came home from work, but I had no grey primer available.  So I was able to sweet talk the boss into picking some up for me.

 

Yesterday at the Club and we spent lots of time talking about the progress of the Clubrooms layout.  Maybe I should take a few photos of the Clubroom HO layouts progress at the November meeting and post them here on that weekends Blog.

 

So this morning while watching Bathurst and cheering for Ford, I glued 6 webbed girders together and then cut them to length for installation on the bridge.  I then added the angled girders in between glimpses at the TV.  When that was complete I then went down to the shed and painted the small girder bridge grey.  Once that was dry I glued on the sleepers and set it aside to dry again.

Here is the finished product.

The completed bridge in place on the layout.

  

My efforts then turned to the Pratt Truss bridge. 

The bridge ready to paint.

I followed the old adage - Divide and Conquer.  So I then separated the Pratt Truss bridge into its two pieces, the bottom and the top.  I then painted both.  The top was pretty easy. 

The completed top half of the bridge.

The bottom proved troublesome.  As I spray painted it, there was bubbling of the styrene occurring in a couple of places.  On closer inspection there was a plastic type cover on the styrene that was not  previously visible. So I tried to scape that away and repaint the affected areas.  I then found three other places where there was a plastic type cover.  So again these were removed and the styrene touched up again.

The eventually completed bottom half of the bridge.

The two halves were then reassembled.  I am quite happy with how it turned out.

I then took the bridge over to the Richmond River opening and put in place to admire my work.

In place across the Richmond River opening.

Now the driver's eye view.

Looking from the northern side of the River.

So I've had some great progress, but still more to do.  I have some sleepers to add across the bridge next weekend and then also try and add the rail across the bridge.  However, I will have to permanently fix the two main bridge piers to the base of the layout with some sort of glue before the bridge is finally placed into position.

But the bridge will need to remain removable as I need to take it to the Club in December.  I still need to make a few minor adjustments to how the bridge will sit height wise.  I also need to add the water pipe that runs across the bridge to make it accurate. With a bit of luck I will be able to run a test train across the bridge again next week. 

Tuesday Nighters this week is at Lefty and Son's.  I wonder what they have done since we were last there.  Will we be in for a surprise?