Colorado O Scale St. Vrain River Bridge Project

Rendering by drawing is awesome! once finished, it will be nice!

jpv in France

Looks pretty good...

I love it! Bridges are one of the best parts of model railroading.

Thanks guys!

I am also attempting to make the sections double as a display module also. 

Some early prilimiary sketches showing some thing about the engineering. I worked closely with a retired civil engineer who helped me create a scene that would be accurate but also visually interesting. Patterned after several St Vrain crossings I think we have a solution that will be visually stimulating as well as functionally authentic.  Era is 1950's... 

The drawing my assistant came up with showing the shift in angle to help avoid the geometric appearance of running the structure in line with the edge of the layout. Dual guage is also being considered similar to this bridge south of Alamosa and in Alamosa.

(C) photo copyrights used for reference only. 

Wow! That is well planned. Looking forward to seeing the real thing.

I definitely like where this is going Erik.

Erik,

Congratulations. Excellent example of using numerous freehand sketches to visualize bridge scene prior to actual construction. Shift angle in rail right-of-way adds a lot of visual interest to the overall scene. Wish more people would adopt your sketch technique before attempting to build their layout scenes. 

Bridge design and details very convincing!

Thank you fellas. I really appreciate the feedback. I believe this will be a fun project and real corner stone to the LTN. 

PS: I changed the title to be suitable for some viewers and participants of the forum. 

The bridge is a seriously beautiful piece. 

OMG!  It's a model!

The seats gave it away, Erik.

Outstanding! 

Very nice Erik.  Here, east of the big muddy, we often see remnants of older bridges aside of newer and larger ones.  Many times all that remains of the older bridge is the stone bridge piers in the body of water (if it's not navigable). 

Interesting sidelight, when Newark Bay was dredged thirty years or so ago to make it more accessible for larger vessels, they did underwater demolition to get rid of the footings/ middle piers from the old Jersey Central draw bridge (which was actually twin lift bridge spans).

Kewl stuff and a sweet bridge, that OMI piece.  Wished I could justify one.

It's a heavy model; and detailed. I've never poured over one of these before. Areas you can't see all done perfect. Kind of a holy grail piece for brass aficionados.

More conceptual drawing: not to scale but worth the effort to work out the scene. 

Too bad Train Cat won't make a shorter (25'-40') version of their very common AmBridge plate girder bridges in O scale.  Yes, I did ask several years ago but was warned not to get pushy or the owner will just ignore you.

Those would be AWESOME for yours and for many projects.   The capture the feel of the real built-up nature of these perfectly.

Train cat for sure has amazing kits. I do wish he would consider O Scale. 

Thanks for sharing, again!

Bridges add excitement to model RRs for me. They are as important as any other piece of equipment on the layout, at least.

This bridge, is amazing.