Erector set bridges: built any?

Yes, I have.  Also, with the Kenner Bridge and Turnpike set.  I once had one that stretched all the way across the living room floor.  Now, we are talking about many many many years ago when I was a child.  Man, I wish I had that stuff now.  Anyway,  why do you ask?

 

Rick

Curiousity, mainly. I own several Postwar bridges from various companies, and I appreciate the simplicity of their design. I remember plans that came with my Erector set back in the 50's for bridge types rangeing from trestle to suspension to a drawbridge.

Just reminiscing, just wondering.

I ended up building an entire elevated rail using Marx light towers as the vertical supports with the balance of the superstructure built from Erector set parts.

 

I have attached some photos.

I built two towers for a custom lift bridge from Erector sets. The movable span is from Atlas.

I use four Erector motors driving Erector pulleys on the tops of the towers.

You can never have too many Erector sets or parts!

TJ

I haven't built one myself, but James May built a great bridge using Meccano. 

Wow! Very cool stuff!

 

Peter

Here is a video of a train layout with Erector set bridge.The layout was at the Midwest TCA Christmas show from a few years ago.

Dan

 

Yes, I built a number of them: single track, two track, even two tracks one above the other.   I loved to do bridges   I would post pictures, only I didn't have a digital camera in 1957!

Erector Sets were so cool.  I don't think I played with anything more when I was a kid.  

 

One thing I noted but never overtly acknowledged was that my parents loved me playing with it.  They thought it was learning, not playing (and they were right, in a way).  I caught on early to the fact that I could easily get a 1/2 hour extension of bed time curfew if I was actively playing with my erector set when the time came. 

 

Also: I don't know about you other folks, but I had a set where the small nuts and bolts just seemed to evaporate slowly, with predictable regularity.  Never could find them until you walked barefoot on the hardware floors!.  My dad picked up an extra  package of them at the hardware store from time to time.  .  

I'd like to see this one built today.......

Lee

You hit a home run when you acknowledged:"One thing I noted but never overtly acknowledgedwas tha my parents loved me playing with it. They thought it was learning.....".

I think a lot of us who frequent this forum are who we are in part because of the encouragement our parents gave by providing us toy trains and other developemental things such as Erector sets. Often this was a financial sacrifice as we all know these were expensive toys back in the day.

 

I worry about the current generation that derive their creative play by swipping a screen or clicking a mouse.

 

Nice post!

Sam

I would like more details about this lift bridge, as it looks a lot like the one I need to design and build for the entrance to my train room.

I agree......I had about every building toy made as a kid....including a plastic Erector like set that would work great in O scale as it was more 3-D look to it.

But all of us that built things constantly got a basic but real world lesson in engineering. I remember a buddy and I built a bridge from Kenner girder and panel set. It was for our HO trains. The bridge would collapse with each train we sent across....until we figured out how to build it and transfer the weight of the train. Basic but real world knowledge! 

I do give my grandkids Lego (and trains) in hopes they will not be 100% ignorant of basic building theories.

You're so right about those nuts and bolts.  Mine were always mysteriously vanishing into the fourth dimension.  Our floors were carpeted at that time, so I couldn't use the bare-foot method to locate them.

 

I don't think Dad ever did catch on that replacements could be found at the local hardware stores.  He probably believed that they had to be special-ordered from Gilbert.

 

By the way, am I the only one who ever foolishly got his finger caught in the gearbox of the electric motor?  It didn't do me any lasting harm, but it taught me a healthy respect for moving gears.

 

 

Oh man!  Now that . . . that is just way too cool for words!

 

You only do it once . . . I know that from experience.

Wow!  Tonkanut, that's a great piece of work!

Rick C, Lee Willis & AMC Dave: You're right about the building toys from when we were kids. I was sick one whole summer around 62, and those plus the REMCO science kits kept me from dwelling on it too much.

It's a real loss for kids not to have things like that. Even LEGOs seem designed to build only one thing, instead of multiple structures.

Anybody have more bridges?

It'll probably be a while before I get to it, but thanks for the video link.  It solves another problem I was looking at, how to keep the trains from going off of the edge, the counter weight is in the way, very nice.

Great thread!  I can remember my brother & I with our shared 4 x 8 layout back in the 60's. He had O-27 oval around the sides and I had a O-27 figure 8 inside his track. We didn't have real buildings so we made buildings, tunnels,  & accessories with Erector Sets, Lincoln Logs, Super City, blocks of wood, or even cardboard.  We had to be able to pick up everything, only the track was fastened to the board.  We played with it in the living room but the board was stored on its side in  our bedroom. Thanks for the memories!