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:
Photo taken by and Copyright Louis Becker. Photo used with permission
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.