Hi friends, I hope you’ve been having a great Memorial Day weekend, and God bless all you vets.
This last Saturday I was able to get back to the trestle core, and gluing on the main timbers. I’d started with the ties last weekend, which were all epoxied onto the acrylic. These main side beams were likewise epoxied, and also Titebonded / pin nailed to the ties. Here’s a couple upside-down shots.
The next step in the main timbers was to build the bridge trusses, and I did a quick jig out of scrap plex to position the parts.
At about this point, I turned in my swivel chair, and the sweater hung on the back of it caught something on the trestle deck – bringing it to the floor, and there it broke into two pieces. (http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-frown.gif)I was sort of in shock for a moment… So the rest of Saturday was spent joining all the parts back together, and designing / cutting / installing an acrylic splice plate. And new timbers to hide it.
On Sunday I re-focused on the bridge trusses.
The gusset plates are lasered plastic, with brass #0 lag screws and washers. After the Saturday meltdown, I was fine with slowing down and trying to do just this – without breaking anything else. (http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-tongue-out.gif)
Today was quite fun, starting with the HO track for the tram car. Here’s the flex track, with 2-tie groups remaining after some snipping.
I then soldered the rails / joiners at the midpoint joint, and also the wires to the rails near the shed area. I then began gluing / pinning down the walkway planks, which both hide the HO ties and clamp them down.
The above shot shows a “turning plate,” where an ore tram car would be manually maneuvered to a side track. In reality the “main line” track would have stopped at the plate on either side, and the flanges of the tram car would ride on the plate while either crossing over to the other side, or jerking the car to the side direction. Since I’m making the “main line” an operating thing, I had to make compromises here and just roughly hint at the turning plate.
Here’s all the main trestle bits thus far.
Next step is to add the posts and railings, and modify the building on top of the main ore bin to accept the end of the trestle and its “garage” for the tram car.
Thanks for viewing,
===>Cliffy
