03-20-2011, 07:12 PM
With all the great bridges that have been posted here I have decided to take a crack at scratchbuilding one too. The bridge is atually an underpass with 4 lanes of traffic under it and three tracks going across the top. From what I have been able to gather the bridge was built sometime between 1915 and 1925. The interesting thing about this structure is that it is three bridges side by side that are tied together to allow for an access road on top. This underpass is located in Bend Oregon along the SP&S Oregon Trunk. The structure had a long history well documented in the local papers about having many vehicles running into it. The lowest clearance was only 10'8" which many an out of town truck driver found the hard way. At one point there was talk of painting the bridge like the mouth of a tiger and hanging lights in front of it. They opted to just hang the lights until a project in early 1980's to lower the road to meet federal highway requirments. At one point in the 70's they equipped the approach with telltales, flashing lights, a photocell that would ring bells if it was tripped and large signs infomring drives to take the detour route.
Althoug the structure itself is not overlly complicated having to build three of the same bridges will warrant some jig work. I am looking forward to the challenge and have started by doing some pencil drawings which has allowed me to start picking up materials for the project. Unfortunatly the LHS has a very limited selection of scratchbuilding material, so I have to wait for my special order. I was able to grab a handful of the needed material but will wait until I get the majority of the goods to make sure I did my math right!!
Althoug the structure itself is not overlly complicated having to build three of the same bridges will warrant some jig work. I am looking forward to the challenge and have started by doing some pencil drawings which has allowed me to start picking up materials for the project. Unfortunatly the LHS has a very limited selection of scratchbuilding material, so I have to wait for my special order. I was able to grab a handful of the needed material but will wait until I get the majority of the goods to make sure I did my math right!!