Curved Pile Trestle -- Part 2

Workbench set up for bent construction

While my wife and I have started a major house project this summer, I am still finding time to work on Willow Springs track-work and build the trestle for the bottom of the "U".

Stringers are complete, glued in place

At the last trestle construction post, I left off with construction of the deck, upside down, glueing stringers to deck planks at the bent locations. I completed that process and cut and stained more deck planks. I decided to wait to glue the balance of the deck planks until after the bents were glued in place under the stringers. That will be done with the bridge upside down again, and these original deck planks will identify the location for the glueing of the bents.

Before starting on the bent construction, I mocked up some cardboard as stream banks on the layout and glued a copy of the bent template to cardboard to figure out the height of the various bents. The two middle bents remained the full size of the original template drawing, based on measurements from the plywood river bottom to the top of the cork height on the layout.

New bent template with bulkhead and
a couple of the completed bents

Using a copy of the original bent template, I drew up a second template including the various heights of the remaining bents and the bulkhead ends. Then, using the templates, I was able to construct the bents after cutting and staining the parts. Typically, I either taped a temporary jig to hold the bent cap in place or taped the bent cap itself to the wax paper covered template drawing. Then I was able to glue the piles in place following the template. Like on the prototype, the sway bars and the bulkhead planks help to stabilize the bents.

The next step is the "fiddly bit" of placing NBW (nut-bolt- washer) castings in the sway bars. After that I will be able to glue the bents in place under the stringers and continue the trestle build.

Willow Springs Under Way - - Track Laying Continued

While I am in the process of scratch building a trestle that will connect the two sides of the layout, I am also continuing work on the Willow Springs mainline and siding track. I have started track between several of the turnouts and with a piece of section track as a placeholder for the trestle, I can extend working track (and running trains) to this side.

In the photo to the right, the first three turnouts and the track connecting them can be seen in place. The next step is to install the flex track curving back to the trestle placeholder and the siding flex track at the ruler location. At that point I will use the sequence I used on the rest of the layout, similar to a pilot's checklist:

• Connect the feeders
• Check visually (joiners correctly engaged, track straightness)
• Check with multi-meter
• Check by running locomotive
• Solder joiners, final install of track nails

At that point, I will install several of the Tortoise switch machines and start the turnout control panel. While I will still have the other end of the siding and all the spur tracks to go, I will be able to use Willow Springs as staging and run multiple trains.