New Project - 140' Thru Plate Girder Bridge - Part 4

Tomorrow turn into 10 days. My back started bothering me again and a trip to the doc plus the medicine prevented me from doing anything for the last 10 days.

Today I got back out to the train room and pickup where I left off.

First up was finishing installing the vertical leg to each angle position.

Next to add the side girders to the base structure

Flip bridge over an install the bottom cross bracing

At this point if you wanted a ballast deck you would need to install the floor plate, as the next step would prevent it's installation. I did cut one to see how it would look, but I made an error on it and it did not fit.

Moving on to adding the top flange to the inside web plates and the top and bottom cap plates.

I did not cut enough cap plates for the bottom of the girders, so will need to cut them and install before painting.

So that is basically the completed bridge less paint, weathering and lettering. If I do decide to market this as a kit. I will need to go back to the design stage to make some adjustments and two changes.

 

New Project - 140' Thru Plate Girder Bridge - Part 3

Today , I got back to working on this project. I make the needed adjustments in the parts and laser cut out the new parts.

Above are the new parts. below I will start with gluing the lower flange onto the web piece.

Next the top flange

Once the top flange is in place and glued. Then I work the each end. I like to bend the piece around the corner a couple times so it starts assuming the round corner shape before trying to glue it.

Two girder are completed to this stage with their flanges in place

Next is to insert the overlays that provide the angle detail

Completed the overlay stage

The over lay stage is where I had issue last time, initially my thought was a dimensional error or humidity, but today I tried a different approach to each girder and discovered it was the glue decreasing clearances. The one glued with ACC when together the best. I am going to adjust the dimension a little more to account for this.

Next up is the final pieces and the most tedious part, adding the vertical leg to each angle position.

The vertical pieces

First five installed

So that it for today, going to finish the remaining pieces tomorrow.

 

New Project - 140' Thru Plate Girder Bridge - Update

This project has taken one step forward and two backwards.

Over the weekend I injured by back, so I have not been able to do much.

Late yesterday I attempted to start one of the girder beams but screwed it up.

Today, I started on the second one, but discovered that there are some errors, so back to the drawing board on the girders.

Here a photo of the parts before I initially started yesterday.

More to come......

New Project - 140' Thru Plate Girder Bridge - Part 2

Thought I would post some assembly drawings for the bridge, before I head off to bed. These will give a better view of the assembly process.

New Project - 140' Thru Plate Girder Bridge - Part 1

Today, I finished a design for a new thru plate girder bridge for the layout.

Some background on why this project and issue with current bridge:

1. I installed a Central Valley Model Works thru truss bridge on the layout initially without any thought into it other than I like the look of the CV bridge and in my haste I did not paint the bridge before installing it, so it currently is install as is straight out of the box.

2. Again without any thought the T&P Bonham division does not have any thru truss bridges on the line, only thru plate girder bridges.

3. There a vertical grade issue on each side of the bridge that has in the past cause uncoupling of the cars.

4. By replacing the CVMW bridge with this thru plate girder bridge, I can lower the track work and level out the vertical grade issue.

After supper out with the wife this evening, I fired up the laser and start the cutting of the bridge components.

After separating the 130+ piece, I started assembling the base girder section, starting with the two longitudinal girder web and ten vertical web pieces.

Next install top flange piece

Next top nine girder flange braces, these go in best if the assembly is inverted before the bottom flange is installed

And finally the bottom flange piece.

There is a bottom flange brace piece and flange pieces for each of the vertical supports, but I will wait until the side girders are installed to help with alignment of these pieces.

That it for tonight, if I find time tomorrow, I will start the first of two side girders, each side girder has 67 pieces.