The Trestle
What would a railroad be without a trestle? Or better yet, what would a largescale railroad be without a largescale trestle? That has been my thought for as long as I've been playing with these over size toy trains anyway.. So, I had to dream up some way, some place to stick a trestle on our layout. With that in mind I found an OK location smack dab in the front of the layout so everyone could see it up close. I will admit that our trestle is not the biggest thing you can imagine or even the longest but it's a trestle none the less...
As I am writing this article it is about 2 degree's outside and there's no way I'm taking myself or the trestle outside to get any cool photo's (no pun intended). When the weather gets better I'll update this article with some nice photo's taken of the layout in action. For now, all you'll get is a couple of pictures and a brief technique on how I made our trestle...
The first thing done was research and then more research. I didn't know anything more than "a trestle is cool" so I had a lot to learn and in the end I was only able to find a few good sources of information. They are, Model Railroader's Model Railroad Bridges & Trestles published by Kalmbach Publishing, the old RGS Technical web site and of course a few of my favorite forums.
Once I had an idea of how the real thing was designed and built I put my ideas down on graph paper and found that what I imagined was a little off the mark. I started over following a more prototypical approach and also found that design to have a certain lacking. My third try was much better. I started with the prototype design and changed it just enough to be "good looking" in the realm of a largescale layout and stay within the guidelines of something prototypical. The pictures below tell a better story so I'll let you get on to them...
This is
my bent jig. To make it I laid out my bent design on a few sheets of graph paper and taped
the finished design to some left over plywood from my kitchen counter top. Then I used
some very thin scraps of redwood to layout a mock up bent and glued them in place. The
scraps are 1/2" wide, which is the same width as the stock I cut for most of my
structures and projects giving me a very good guide for the placement of wood blocks cut
from pine that serve as the fixture of the bent jig. Each pine block is glued and screwed
onto the plywood using care to make sure everything lined up just right. In the end when
everything was dry some minor adjustments were made here and there with a file to allow
the wood used for the bents to slide in and out of the jig with some freedom to keep any
binding to a minimum. I hope you can see the detail well enough in this picture.
This is a bent after assembly. I use 1/2" X 1/2" redwood for the
uprights (posts) and top beam. 1/2" X 1/4" redwood is used for the cross beams
everywhere else on the bents. My bents are not very tall but the idea is the same
regardless of height (my jig will make a 2 1/2 foot bent max.). I test fit the wood in the
jig and make any extra cuts before gluing and nailing anything. I use 1/2" brass escutcheon
pins for the sides of the bents and 1" escutcheon pins for the top beams. Any and all
joints get glued with Titebond II. Once the wood is fit in the jig I glue and nail the
cross beam and top post in place. The bent is then lifted out of the jig, flipped over and
put back into the jig so I can glue and nail the other side of the cross beam. When doing
the back side I slip an extra cross beam under the upper area of the bent to keep it
laying flat in the jig while I nail the second beam. At this point I'm done with the jig.
All other steps are done on the bench by hand. You'll notice in the picture I have the
sway bracing on this bent. I use the same technique to install sway bracing. It's glued
and nailed... Sway bracing is made of scrap redwood. I lucked out because when I cut my
wood down to size, some of my scraps come out to be 1/2" X 3/16". When these
bents are done each one can hold my body weight of close to 200 pounds.
Sway bracing between
bents is made from the same scrap wood as the bents. For this trestle spacing of the
bents is 8 inches. Gluing and nailing is also the same. Small stringers are made from the
rest of my scrap cuttings which luckily is 1/4" X 3/16". If you look closely in
the picture you can see a couple of them near the center of the trestle. I also use some
aluminum angle stock to hold my bents in place while I nail and glue everything. One thing
not pictured here is the top stringers where the track lays. I'll update that with a new
photo soon. The top stringers are also made from 1/4" X 1/2" redwood. Each stringer
lays on it's side and is glued and nailed to the top of each bent.
The
finished trestle is not the highest one around but does look pretty good. When I moved the
trestle outdoors all that was really done to install it was dig a trench, lay the
assembled trestle in the trench, level it from side to side and end to end and then fill
the trench with some Quickcrete cement.