I started a new module this morning I’m calling Raging River (yes it’s a tad tongue-in-cheek). It was inspired by a picture I found on railpictures.net:
The locomotive in the picture is actually the first diesel recieved by the Soo Line in 1939, an EMD SW1. This isn’t a museum piece, it’s actually in use by ILSX for revenue service!
Since this is such a small bridge I’ve decided to build it as a mini-mo module, this decision was in part influenced by the fact that I had enough birch leftover from CR23 to do a mini-mo. It is 8.5 inches wide and 18 inches long, the actual bridge will be about eight inches of that.
The structure is very rigid being hardwood and using plenty of screws. I haven’t puttied up the screw holes yet so what you see are the holes generated by my Kreg jig. I decided on using a good solid support for the approach track and will use lighter weight materials for the scenic ground. The outer frame only dips about an inch and a half right now, I may increase that depending on how the bridge components look in the space. That is also why there is not yet any support for the bridge supports as I have yet to decided on what I’m using and what dimensions they will require.
REALLY love this idea of creating a small diorama based on a prototype photo – and the SW1 was my first love diesel-wise. Great photo!
It was a great project for me as it was a learning project on a number of fronts (never having done water, static grass, hand laid track, or built a trestle). That said, if I were to do it again I’d go strictly diorama (which now that I think about it sounds like fun) as this was designed when I was active in Free-mo and this would work as a mini-module. But I’m not active in free-mo anymore focusing and so it’s just way over built and the dimensions make it too small to really use for model photographs.