Tori's Trestle - Part 2

In Part 1 I described how my granddaughter, Tori, inspired me to build a trestle on an unfinished part of my Blacklog Valley Railroad.  Using parts from two Campbell Curved Trestle kits, I planned to construct a scale 160 foot pile trestle towering over 40 feet above a rushing mountain stream.  The trestle would be curved to a 22 inch radius. 

Campbell provided materials for hand laid track on wooden ties.  Rather than handlaying all that rail, I opted to use Micro Engineering code 70 flexible bridge track.  The ME track even comes with two lengths of guard rail that fits neatly into molded spikes between the running rails.  In Part 1, I showed how I made a tracing of the tracks that would be replaced by the trestle.

I secured the newsprint tracing to a table and laid the ME bridge track over it, carefully bending the track until it conformed exactly to the tracing.  Then I fastened it down over the tracing with blue painter's tape.

In the above photo, you can see how I am beginning to set one of the two guard rails into position.  I used ACC cement (Superglue) to affix the rails to the styrene ties, weighting them down with lead weights salvaged years ago from an old Linotype machine.

I later discovered that the ACC did not hold the rails very securely, probably because of the wood grain embossed on the ties, so in the end I found that securing the rails with Pliobond contact cement was much more effective.  The finished product looked very realistic.

The guard rails were not just for show.  By glueing them to the ties, the rails fixed the curvature of the track so that it would not be accidently bumped out of alignment with the template underneath.  At this point, I set the track aside, and moved to the next step: Staining the wooden parts for the trestle bents that would support the track.

As I mentioned in Part 1, I had purchased a Campbell trestle kit on eBay that was partially assembled.  Some of the parts had been stained a brownish color.  Others were unstained, as were the parts in the second kit that I purchased later.  I decided to restain the colored wood, along with all the unfinished wooden parts, using a brown Weathering Mix from Hunterline that I had picked up at a train show.  The alcohol and shoe dye solution left the wood a dark brown color resembling wood treated with creosote. 

One of these two bulkheads was previously stained, the other was raw wood.  Can you tell the difference?  (Answer: the one on the right was previously stained.)

With the cross braces stained an appropriate color, it was time to begin assembly of the trestle bents.  The kit instructions included a template on which one could lay out and glue the various components.  Campbell recommends placing waxed paper on the template.  I used a sheet of glass instead, which was easier to see through and clean up afterward. 

In this photo, some of the braces (called "sway bars") have been prestained.  Others were not.  I found that it was quicker to assemble the bents from raw wood, and then dip the entire structure in a weathering bath.  Here an entire bent assembly is ready for the staining process:

The finished product is laid on top of the template for comparison.

The work of assembling the bents was somewhat tedious.  There were 13 of them, not including the bulkheads at either end of the trestle.  The next step would make assembly seem like a breeze.  For the sake of realism, every point where a sway bar crosses a piling needed to have a nut/bolt/washer casting attached.  In Part 3 I will talk about that process, and how I then positioned and attached the completed bents to the bridge track.