Trestle bridge

A survey of the damage sustained in the "bike accident". It could've been a lot worse. Only a couple of small pieces of the refuge island, and one of the strips of capping off a wing wall are currently "missing", expected to be found on the floor of the garage once I can clear enough stuff to search for them.

 

 

 

 

 

The upside of this is that another problem has been solved for me. As built, all locos and rollingstock in the collection would traverse the bridge OK with the exception of deep-flanged Lima stuff (expected, since I had used rail stripped from a piece of N scale flex track) and my Trax Z.13. The Z.13 would drop inside the gauge at one point, so the tyres must be fairly narrow compared with everything else. Presumably, the use of a Kadee coupler gauge for setting the track gauge had caused a degree of inconsistency along the length of the bridge. The difficulty lay in removing the rails, which had been secured with a drop of araldite on EVERY transom. Well, both rails were loosened sufficiently at one end (four transoms) by the bike impact for me to be able to work my way carefully along and prise them off. Only two more transoms came adrift in this process.
Rectification work will include finding / replacing the missing bits of timber, scraping off the araldite from rails & transoms, then relaying the rails. Any ideas for a cheap, easily made gauge would be welcomed. Finally, the wing wall assemblies will be re-attached.
Once re-assembled, I'll work on some sort of concrete base for the bents.
That's it for tonight.

 

Where to start?

Below are some images of two of the three layouts I've "built". The scenicked one was ostensibly constructed for a corporate Christmas function in 2008, for the enjoyment of the kids. Since it re-used a lot of my old bits of track, structures etc, it naturally remained my (son's) property after the event.

There's a layout under there somewhere:
The following pictures show what has happened to "Yabbie Creek" - the layout I started after finishing the HSC over a quarter of a century ago. It was to be a NSWR transition era branch line terminus. The staging yard is in the section where the drill & grinder are. The terminus is under the boxes etc on the other side of the U-shaped base boards.

The trestle bridge (Ironbark Models kit) over Yabbie Creek was damaged during home relocations. This was the first serious structure kit I built. The hundreds of holes for the nut / bolt / washer details were drilled without the aid of a pin vice or drill press ... resulting in callouses on thumb & forefinger.

The turntable (a Bruce Akrigg product from circa 1991) has been removed after being slightly damaged by a bicycle falling off its hook on the garage wall.
My wife, Alison, has encouraged me to repair the turntable and trestle as the first step on the road to building Weddin. I'll then reclaim the Peco Code 75 track, points etc, as they have hardly had a train over them in all those years.
Now to clear the decks!