With the work on the Hunter River Bridge and the area north of Singleton now substantially complete, my focus is moving to the upper level of the layout and the refurbishment of the Philip's Creek township. In the reorientation after the move, much of the earlier Philip's Creek was demolished and is to be replaced.
However, the first project arose unexpectedly. I had been musing about how I could connect the 'commercial area' (one pub and two shops) and the railway station. A good mate recently invested in a 3D printer and offered to print a rail overbridge based on a standard NSWR North Coast Railway design. He printed the bridge superstructure (beams and deck) in two parts and separate prints for each pier set and abutment. In addition, the fence frames was printed in four separate pieces, two per side.
The components were glued together with superglue and I overlaid the 'deck' with a sheet of Evergreen styrene V grove to simulate the actual timber decking.
Commercial CGI sheet was glued to the handrails to complete the barrier fencing and the superstructure was fitted to the pier sets in preparation for painting.
Once painted, the overbridge was fitted and then glued into position.
All that needs to be done now is to complete this project is to undertake some significant earthworks to create the bridge approaches but that's a story for another time.
Many thanks Ian.
As
a footnote, the standard design provides for both a single and two way
road widths. The single lane version has four bearers while the two lane bridge has five. The modeled overbridge is a two lane version but only has four bearers. We both realised this error after the event but it is not obvious from normal operating positions. Maybe, I should put load limit signage on the bridge approaches!
