Large Scale Central

Tuolumne River Bridge

Track and Trestles
#1

Over the past few months we have been working on building a bridge for the layout based on West Side Lumber companies Tuolumne River bridge. Today we had our first work session of the season. The crew brought the bridge outside and placed it in place.

Still a lot of work to do to complete the bridge but trains are now running again. Our goal is to have the bridge fully complete by TrainOps.

Following are some photos of the install today.

Stan

Assembly of the bridge was done in our basement

Bringing the bridge outside

First placement

Digging the first set of footers for the bridge

First train across the bridge

#2

WOW!!!

#3

very nice!

#4

Dang nice Stan.

#5

Very impressive work Stan! I have often thought this would be a great prototype bridge for a garden railroad, but never seen it done! A great addition.

#6

Where are the guard rails…?

#7

Beautiful. Love seeing trestles on a curve. Very nice design.

Doc Tom

#8

Stan,

looks good from here, and it looks like it was a tight fit getting out of the basement. will look to inspect later @ Trainops

Al P.

#9

Fantastic, Stan

#10

That is a most impressive bridge

#11

What’s the height and length of that work of art? What type of wood is it built from?

#12

Ken Brunt said:

What’s the height and length of that work of art? What type of wood is it built from?

I want to guess at this from the pictures and say 3’ high x 15’ long

#13

Laaaarge scale…

that is an impressive piece of work.

#14

Excellent. This will make yet another great photo location. Can’t wait to see it @ TrainOps (http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-cool.gif)

#15

Look forward to seeing it.

#16

Fred

While not all narrow gauge bridges have guard rails, the Tuolumne River bridge did indeed have inside guard rails so our model will as well. Still a lot of work to complete including 3 bents for the ends, footings, tie rods for the center bents and yes guard rails. This week we hope to pour the concrete for the footings for 6 of the bents. The bridge will take awhile to complete as we have at least a dozen other projects going on at the same time.

David

Good guess. Both the prototype and our model are just under 59 ft tall (35"). The length of our bridge is a little shorter at about 318’ (15’8") vrs 326’ for the prototype. One major change was that the radius of the prototype was to tight. The prototype has 117 ft radius curves (5’) and our minimum radius for our curves is about 200 ft.

The bridge isl built of redwood. Each time we visit our son in California we pick some up at home depot and bring it back with us.

Stan

#17

Beautiful. Can’t wait to run on that one.

#18

That is a Super Nice Trestle… WOW!

#19

That is one impressive bridge. Very nice indeed

#20

Awesome bridge, Been working on one as well but no where near that big. But it is 7 feet long . Still have the bents to make and the sandstone abutments to carve, before I can put it in place and then start on the next bridge. have 7 more to build of various sizes. Next week I will be spending the day cutting Ties.

Dan