This build is almost as long as that Titanic movie
1 Like
Then you’re getting your money’s worth. 
Now that I’m back from Nevada (which, for this project, helps a lot), I’m aiming to start on the trestle deck this weekend. 
Cliff, I hear with all this travelling, the flight attendants now know you by your first name and dietary preference.
Southwest doesn’t have food, but yeah, they have a can of Lagunita ready for me.
Is that Cliff without his glasses?
What the…
Eeew.
…
Today I got the ties planed and cut, set in the jig and sanded a bit.
Tommorrow, hopefully joists. Or stringers. Or whatever the beams directly under the ties are called.
3 Likes
Cliff;
Regarding Bill’s Titanic photoshop, it’s OK - they had just drunk lots of milk!
Best, David Meashey
I’m sure there is a good reason, but explain why some of the timbers follow the curvature while others form some odd angles.
Same. I’ve never understood curved trestle design…
The inner four sets have staggered joints, to avoid having them all land on the same bent. I’ve seen that in a prototype trestle, and maybe it’s to reduce the dependence on a single bent’s top sill, or keep them smooth, not sure…
For me, it’s to add rigity when moving the deck during assembly and installation.
The outer stringers should have had staggered joints as well, but with a curve this tight they’d look kinda dumb. So I made them follow the curve better.
I’ve decided to back those up with 8’ strips, bent, and without joints. I just laid them in loose, and yeah, they fit nicely. And now I’m wondering why I didn’t just use this method for the inner 4 stringers. Oh well.
Well at least you didn’t use radiused stringers 
The extra bent (as in bending) stringers are in, and everything seems sturdy. It pulled up from the jig fine, and I was able to flip it without a problem.
Final bit for the deck are some topside stringers, so that’s ready to go. The plywood bits are to space the new parts away from the stringers below a consistent distance.
All I want is video “WITH AUDIO” of it being carried out to the layout!
i never would try to estimate, why Cliff did it, but…
to keep the rails straight/level on a wooden bridge/trestle “they” (the 1:1 engineers) came up with the idea, to stagger the longitudinal beams. (to evade, that a single bent could sink in more, than its neighbours)
so some lines of beams lay on bent one to three, three to five etc. while others lay on two to four, four to six, etc. (more than two bents long beams are hard to find)
on a curved trestle that came out as being zig-zagged against each other.
well, as in 1:1 they seldom build R1 curved trestles, it looks not as obvious, as in our scale.
ps: Cliff,
if you want a purrfect trestle, you might want to investigate, how they made the upright beams/posts on trestles, higher than one treetrunk-length…
(i did, but decided it would be too much work for something, that none of my visitors would ever notice) ((and as always, i was wrong. a carpenter noticed the too long posts))
3 Likes
Makes perfect sense, thanks for explaining that Korm.
What protectant are you going to use for this project?
Is the protectant for taking it outside and placing it on the layout or for sealing the wood for 50yrs after he is dead?