Hi everyone, I'm working on a new layout design and could use a little advice. Here's the plan: The small bridge going over the road (circled in red) is my issue. I'm thinking that it would be a plate girder bridge, but I'm not sure if it's prototypical to have it with two divergent tracks like that. I've only ever seen double track bridges where the tracks are parallel. Is it OK like this or should it be changed? Thanks. -Chris
They're too close to the switch IMO. I would go with a ballasted deck or rearrange the track or move the road further right.
As for prototype, here are a couple of pics from Salamanca NY, where there is(was) a switch right at the end of the girder bridge In this photo, the bridge, over the road, has split And here we see the diverging tracks on the "single" bridge The switch, itself, had been fully off the bridge, but not by much
I have seen switches immediately at the end of a bridge. But none on a bridge. However, I never say never, as there have probably been some examples. If possible, I'd try to get the switch off that bridge.
When I was in jr. high school in the 1950s, I used to walk home over a railroad trestle (it had a pedestrian sidewalk) on Houston Belt & Terminal's East Belt line. The line was adjacent to the sprawling Hughes Tool complex, and there was a lead track into the plant that diverged from a turnout ON the timber pile trestle. The lead continued on its own curved leg of the trestle, over the plant perimeter security fence, across an in-plant private road and then met ground level where it branches into a whole network of spurs. I have a photo I took over the trestle as a adult about 20 years ago, but it is from the public street side where you cannot see the switch and the diverging leg of the trestle. (I don't trespass on RR property or walk over RR trestles any more...) Meanwhile, the plant moved to the ex-urbs and the in-plant tracks were pulled. But it did once exist.
It's not so much the proximity of the switch that concerns me. I could move the bridge a bit further away easily enough. It's the fact that the two tracks going over the bridge aren't parallel. Is that prototypical?
Yes. Very true. I was just picturing it within that example he has drawn. The issue for me would be clearance on the diverging route. Railroad engineering tended to avoid these situations wherever possible, and as shown above, it could be done. Latah Jct was forced by the reconstruction of I-90, and Wishram due to geography.
Here's the overhead shot of that bridge in Salamanca, NY: Unfortunately it's not quite the same as what I've got on my plan.
I would have to search...but I don't think it's really rare. The photos or actual visitations that spring readily to mind are not of non-parallel bridge sides, but a wide bridge with the switch on it. Need that for switchman's footing to throw the silly thing. Open decks are not going to work.
As far as being prototypical, the railroads did what they had to do with the space available. For example, the B&O mainline at Harpers Ferry has a switch inside a tunnel on the Maryland side of the Potomac River. It emerges from that tunnel almost directly onto a couple of bridges, one for the mainline and one for the branch that swithced-off inside the tunnel. These bridges cross the river into West Virginia, and have been replaced/relocated a few times due to devastating floods. On the branchline bridge, there is a switch ON THE BRIDGE, although one path is now defunct. You can see this on Google Maps (but will need to count tracks going into the two sides of the tunnel because Google does not have x-ray vision to see that switch in there). Steve
Honest, I just recently saw that very thing in a 1:1 scale pic. Chris , in many ways everything you come up with that looks ok, logical, sturdy, useful, and sometimes unusual has probably been done on a RR somewhere. RRs are not put in in a one-size-fits-all manner, except gauge . RRs all did and still do their own thing to get something accomplished as long as it meets national RR transportation safety rules. Even that doesn't exist if RR is early enough in history. You go ahead and do what your RR needs to do at this location on the the line. If you have to saw away some of the girder side walls so train won't hit it on the diverging track, do it. Then finish off the new end to look natural/ "something we had to do here ".. Those things add curiosity and charm to a MRR....Your RR...
