My railroad crosses several smaller streams. Since I had not worked on scenery in those areas, they were just flex track bridging the gap. Some of my operators mentioned that they could see the track sag under the weight of an engine passing over it. Therefore I decided to build a quick and dirty trestle to support the track and make it more visually appealing.
Because it was intended to be temporary, I didn’t add any details like NBW castings or walkway, and there are no abutments. If you are building a permanent bridge, the abutment is definitely worth adding and NBW castings are a nice touch.
First step was to do some research. I searched for wooden trestle images and found several plans for trestles, plus I looked up trestle plans in my magazine collection.
From those I decided on a five pile bent, sketched it out on paper, then transferred the outline to a sheet of styrene. I added styrene strips to form a jig to hold 3/32″ square balsa strips. Since this was intended as temporary I used balsa because its cheap and easy to find. Plus I was intending to paint it so the wood grain wasn’t important. If you wanted a better looking bent or wanted to stain, rather than paint, you might want to consider basswood instead. Here is the bent jig. The eight of the bent was determined by the height from the “water” surface to the bottom of the flex track, less the thickness of he floor stringers (1/16 x 1/8 balsa).
I cut balsa strips and put them in the jig, gluing them to each other with white glue. Sway braces were added with 4×8 basswood strips.
Once I assembled the required bents, 4 in total, I assembled them by using 1/16 x 1/8 balsa wood as deck stringers The angle of the bents was set to be approximately in line with the “flow” of the water in the creek.
The bridge was fitted in place to make sure everything cleared. Two bents needed a bit of light sanding using and emery board to slide into place under the track.
Once everything fit, the bridge was removed and painted. It was painted a mix of browns and greys with a dry brush of grey for highlights. When installed it adds a nice touch to the scene until the final scenery catches up with it.
