The Richmond River has been Bridged

As I have been doing quite often of late, I made my way over to the local hobby shop in the hope of buying a few things.  I needed some styrene tube so I could manufacture the water pipe that will run across the Richmond River bridge.  No doubt this supplies the other side of Casino across the Richmond River from the water treatment plant.  I plan to have my pipe removable as my river crossing is removable in three sections - the girder section to the south, the Pratt Truss in the middle and through girder to the north.  I inserted some 1.6mm rod into one end of my purchased styrene 3.2mm tube and glued the rod in place.  I can now thread all the 3.2mm lengths of tube together (elephant style) to go across the bridge opening.  I have now sprayed the water pipes silver.  I really need to weather them up as I have pictures to the real ones and they are not really silver.  They are a dirty colour.

 

The water pipe I am modelling is visible in the centre right of this photo of the Richmond River Bridge from the northern bank. I took this photo about 8 and a half years ago.

 

While at the hobby shop I splashed out and purchased a length of Micro Engineering bridge track in code 70 profile.  I had planned on laying my own code 70 weathered rail across the bridge on my own stained up sleepers, but I didn’t think I had enough sleepers left.  I think I will save them for a few small bridges in other locations on the layout. 

 

So when I got home from the hobby shop, I trial fitted the bridge track across the Pratt Truss base.  I had to cut the sleeper webbing in a few places, so I could slide the sleepers back and forward so I could make the track fit properly.  The bridge has a few raised sections that needed to take the place of a sleeper, so I needed to push the sleepers out of the way.  I used aquadhere to join the track to the bridge and left it over night to dry with a weight on it to keep it flat. 

 

Today I fitted the pratt truss bridge across the opening.  I also laid some weathered code 70 rail across my through truss girder bridge.  I now have the structure across the Richmond River complete.  I think everything is basically level.  I might have to pack the bridge in a corner or two.  I have run a container wagon and two eureka cattle and sheep wagons across the opening and I currently have no issues.  There might be a few small bits of fine tuning to do before I run a track rubber across the opening to remove any glue residue and can then run my first powered train, before I run a triple header across – with my fingers crossed. 

 

Today I also started installing the guard rails across the bridge.  Again these will be in three separate lengths similar to the bridge sections so I can remove the various sections if required.  I need to remove the bridge sections at least once in the future when I take the bridge to our Annual Modelling Competition at our Clubrooms in December.

 

There are no photos of my work this weekend.  I might film the first powered crossing of the Richmond River next weekend and put it up on the Blog.

 

Late this morning I headed out to the Buy and Sell run by one of the model railway clubs on the southside of Brisbane.  I met up with Darren, Paul and Geoff, as well as a quite a few other people who said G’day to me.  I didn’t buy anything, but I saw Darren and Paul carting away handfuls of good bargains.

 

Next Saturday I hope to install the water pipe permanently and following that, head over to Shelton’s so we can both make our way to Anthony’s place for a running session of Victorian and South Australian outline rolling stock.  I might have to charge the batteries in my Procab-R in case Anthony has installed radio since his last running session.