Still messing with tweaking and improving the new layout design. Got to thinking that if I moved the fishing fleet and cannery to an inside harbor area I could free up some dock space and utilize a few more structures that can be both rail and barge served on the outside edge of the layout. I am aware of the Faller Bascule bridge however in both length and the need to raise the track, which would create issues, I don't think it would work for me, not to mention that it is currently not available. In the layout design most of the layout will be a 2 inch foam laid on a wood sub base and only the mainline will be mounted on a cork roadbed. The wood sub base will be the water area and the dock surface will be mounted on the foam. That will allow the larger vessels to be nestled in the murky water and have the decks close to dock height. The inner harbor will have the smaller fishing fleet and will be accessed by a 2.25 inch wide channel. Since the rails must cross this channel I got to thinking about bridges and came up with the idea to use Atlas bridge components for the basis for the lift bridge since I already have quite a few. Went searching for ideas and found that someone had done this in HO using Atlas bridge parts in that scale. So the question be has anyone tried this in N scale, and if so how did you go about it?
I have not done it yet but I- oh wait. I HAVE done it, sort of. I "simulated" one end of a vertical lift bridge for a 2x4 foot N scale kids' layout I built back in 1974. I used the lift bridge portal to disguise a hole through the background so I could have 2 scenes, each 1 foot deep, one on each side of the layout. I used Atlas truss bridge parts standing on end for the sides of the lift tower, and plastic frozen novelty dessert sticks (!) for cross-members. My model was a very sketchy interpretation of a real vertical lift bridge in the prototype Port of Corpus Christi scene I was modeling. The bridge was imploded and removed 6 or 7 years ago but I shot a couple dozen photos over the years and donated them to the library archives where I got my History masters degree. Besides the few pix I have on railimages, one or two more are available online in the Kenneth L. Anthony photographic collection. http://rattler.tamucc.edu/dept/special/Anthony.html
Barge squeezing through a fairly small vertical lift bridge on Brays Bayou and Broadway in Houston about 1930, from a Port of Houston publication.
Did Pete Nolan do a lift bridge based on the "Cape Cod Lift Bridge": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Cod_Canal_Railroad_Bridge I have other pics of this bridge if you like.
Haven't seen anyone try this, but it does look good, quite solid. Proportions are great for a small harbor scene.
And that is the key words, small harbor. In fact everything designed to go on the next layout is small sized with the sawmill and the stone quarry bldgs. being the largest footprints. I have messed around with a inner harbor design today and am not totally happy with it since I ended up violating my arm reach rule. The concept of the inner harbor is good though and I wish that little light bulb had lit up sooner in this process. And restricting the inner harbor to the fishing fleet means that I can go with a narrower entrance channel and thus a short bridge. From what I can tell the gentleman used a single Atlas span and that works out to about forty feet of bridge spanning a thirty foot channel. Also because the fishing fleet has shorter masts than my seagoing and coastal vessels the overall height can be lower. In short what the gentleman did in HO scale I need to accomplish in N scale and keep that level of compactness.
Yes, I built the Cape Cod railroad bridge to be a working lift bridge. I did not implement it because the two towers would have to be absolutely plumb in all directions, and my mountings for the towers were not rock solid. There was a length of "T" shaped brass on each end of the lift section that fit into a square "C" shaped channel. I didn't do it because I didn't have time for the fiddlilies involved, nor the rock solid mounting. I may take it up again, as I have the still have the bridge--but I think it will require brass all around to be solid enough. That's a long span, a shorter span may be easier.
Not the first loco to go off a lift bridge. I believe this one may have been unmanned as there were several unmanned forays and spectacular dives off a few open lift bridges in the past. I may have just managed to design my way out of having a lift bridge of some type and yet incorporate the inner harbor area while at the same time keep 30 inch aisles and a reach to the back track at under 30 inches also. What I have so far seen is that while there are plenty of regular bridge styles, viaducts, and trestles out there, there are few to next to none of any type of lift bridge available with Faller being the only folks with a working model, if they ever produce it again. Plenty of custom made stuff was found that unfortunately would overwhelm the layout area and most likely cost more than I will spend on materials for the layout. So maybe I dodged the bullet on this one although I believe I have a turntable bridge from a kit somewhere that I could end up doing a center pivot bridge if the need arises. So maybe at some point Atlas or Kato will step up to the plate with a version.
The engines were actually empty when the crash happened. The air bled off the brakes and the engines took off on their own. The entire story is here: http://www.nilesdepot.org/niles/wreck.html
Started this thread almost two years ago when I was looking at a downsized layout and port scene. So with some Atlas bridge components in had I started a rough up. DSCN0030-8 by John Moore posted Dec 31, 2015 at 6:12 PM Did some trimming and fitting. The lower portion raises and the upper section is nested inside the lower at full raise. Started work on the bridge abutments using some sheet cut stone to enlarge the abutments. DSCN0031-1 by John Moore posted Jan 2, 2016 at 11:23 AM The basic abutments before attachment to the Atlas abutments. DSCN0032-2 by John Moore posted Jan 2, 2016 at 11:23 AM And the abutments now glued to the Atlas ones and ready to be filled in. Also added a deck tp the top to take both hoist houses and the bridge operators control house which I have already built. DSCN0034-3 by John Moore posted Jan 2, 2016 at 11:23 AM If I succeed with this endeavor it will open up a lot of plan design opportunity and the last plan hinges on this bridge. I end up with a ship channel about 65 feet wide and the bridge clearance above the water would be about 75 feet. More than enough for my fishing fleet and the smaller vessels that use the inner harbor.
John, I realize it's a little late for a concept change, but a rolling bascule might be less finicky in the precision construction and mounting department. Granted that a bascule truss is asymmetrical, thus rarely, if ever available off-the-shelf. However, the supporting structure would be simpler to install and shorter, thus less susceptible to damage by errant arms and felines.
Point taken. However when I looked hard at the Atlas bridge types I had on hand I realized that I could cobble something together fairly easy with them and space was an issue. The bridge only eats up a little over five inches of space. And since it is has the inner harbor on the other side it is not something I have to reach over, and I can get to the other side from the opposite side of the 30 inch wide layout to take a small vac to the water surface. A swing bridge would have been even a better choice since I am not trying to get one of Pete's super tankers through the channel but one of my maximum 24 foot beam and narrower vessels through that 57 foot wide channel. In the last design all my larger vessels are using the outer harbor so no vertical or horizontal clearance issues there. But remember this is more for the smaller vessels I have as stated above. I can get my small inter coastal fleet under it along with my fishing fleet and it is wide enough that two of my fishing vessels can pass each other under it. And if I had used a straight pier girder on top I could technically I could get about ten more feet of vertical clearance.
I keep forgetting that your fishing boats in the Northwest require far less vertical clearance than our shrimp boats on the Gulf Coast.
I don't know about that being true. PNW trollers and purse seiners have fairly significant masts. Crabbers and processors can be rather large vessels.
