Have made some progress on the "Timber Opening" or trestle project. It is convenient that the railways loved utilising 12" x 12" girder components for a host of structures as it makes my life easier. This example is of the 14' variety which equates to 14' centre to centre of the bents. The transoms have been given bolt detail which follows prototype practice in being staggered from one transom to the next. All other detail has been included and the only divergence from prototype being the capwales and angle bracings not checked into the piles and while this feature would be nice to achieve...it is very time consuming and to my eyes the present method does not detract too much from the overall scheme.
The base utilised for construction is 3mm acrylic with the pile holes laser cut as a jig arrangement. The difficult part about this project is the age old question...How Long and How High???. To ever be considered as a kit it would need to be decided as each modeller has their own requirements. In the next few weeks we will ( with help from other modellers I hope ) decide which variety to look at first and try and work out a construction method which utilises a span by span ability...easily said!!!
Well if nothing else it has been an enjoyable time spent researching, measuring, developing and building this example. There are wing assemblies completed for this version and I will post some completed shots. We have now also built a jig which when loaded with timber, machines the rebate in the outer piles where they meet the girders and irrespective of what height the bents are made this will make this operation a hell of a lot easier. Now to find a spot on the layout!!!
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| The jig for rebating the piles....12 at a time is certainly better than hand filing on at a time!!! |
Rod
ReplyDeletePoss to start with a basic kit, say 3 spans and two sets of piles and a set of wings ?
Height...that's a bit harder. Depends on how many diff sized piles you want to make ? Low med and high ? If there was no bolt detail on the bracing at least that could be universal and cut to size by the builder. Span add on kit, one span and a set of piles ?
Would keeping the spans individual allow modellers to curve an opening ??
Just throwing some ideas out there :-)
Gaz,
ReplyDeleteNow we are getting somewhere...you certainly have more ideas than me at this stage. The angle bracings are mitred to meet up with the capwales and the bolt holes where the bracing crosses the piles are set to that angle so they would have to be in a set with the individual bent lengths ( heights ) and are not interchangeable....Also the girders on the trial are one piece and incorporate the corbels. So to satisfy the modeller wanting a radius it would mean shortening the girders to single span and the corbels would be loose in the kit...certainly a possibility...Please keep the ideas coming as the decision on how to pack these kits will be a series of $64,000 questions....Maybe the kits will need to be ordered individually and each kit becomes a "custom order"...
Regards,
Rod
Custom orders would be great for the buyer who knows what he wants and/or has specific needs for an established layout.
ReplyDeleteIf your in my position and havnt even thought about the locations for creeks etc then a kit that can be assembled and placed and then sceniced around would be the go, no thinking required!
Going by the FB feed back so far (mostly from modellers with some skill) having a range of individual components available would be a big plus as well.
It gets down to how many options you want to make available, then you will have to deal with customers trying to interpret what it is they actually want.
The timber trestle is a classic piece of infrastructure, it could be huge !!