CSX Cumberland Division

[Bob]

It has been a while since I posted - I've spent quite a bit of time replacing couplers, adjusting coupler height, identifying problematic freight cars, slight imperfections in the track that affect some locomotives and not others, etc - the usual fine-tuning in N scale I suppose.  I am now returning to the 1931 bridge.  I used 80' Micro Engineering plate girders, but the ends at an angle to match the prototype, spray painted them gray and then tried my hand with weathering powders.  Lance used half-inch aluminum channel to support the bridge track, and so I used CA cement with an accelerator to directly attach the plate girders to the aluminum channel.  I'm sure I'll get better at this with time, but the results are good enough for now.  The bridge piers have been painted a sandstone color but have not been weathered, and I need to paint and weather the bridge shoes that will connect the girders to the top of the piers.  I placed the piers on the riverbed to see how things will look - some wooden risers are still in place to hold the bridge until the piers, bridge shoes and girders are all painted, weathered and assembled.  After that, I'll then work on the top of the bridge, putting in a walkway and adding some other details.

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[chessie system fan]

Excellent.

I just found a bunch of drone photos of this location yesterday.  This guy has a bunch more in his photostream.

CSX Q216 HARPERS FERRY by Jon Wright, on Flickr

[Bob]

Thanks Aaron!  This guy takes amazing photos, and there are some nice and unusual views of the HF bridges.  These will be useful as I continue to work on the scenery in this area.  Thanks for posting!

[Erik aka Ngineer]

Wow Bob, this is starting to look like a great center piece to watch long trains roll slowly by. 
Erik

[Bob]

Thanks Erik!  I painted your bridge shoes last night - they get weathered today, and hopefully I can start attaching them to the girders.  The plan is to NOT glue them to the piers, rather letting them simply rest on top of the piers so that I can remove the bridge for maintenance and so I can install the walkways and other upper-deck details.  Your bridge shoes are a prefect match for the real thing!

[sirenwerks]

Bob,


FYI, plans exist for the Harpers Ferry station at the HASL website of the LOC. There's a bunch of Harpers Ferry information at that site, including on that bridge.

[Bob]

Hi Sirenworks - I'm afraid I don't know what HASL and LOC stand for!  COuld you spell them out?  I have plans on the station, and quite a bit of information on the 1896 bridge, but really not much on the 1931 bridge, which is less of a problem as it it pretty much a string of 100-foot plate girders.  Thanks!
Bob

[Philip H]

LOC is Library of Congress.

[Erik aka Ngineer]

LOC is Library of Congress.

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/hh/technote.html I guess it is HALS (Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record/Historic American Landscapes Survey)

[Bob]

Ah!  Thanks guys.  I have some of these plans, but not all of them, so thanks very much for this information.

[unittrain]

Love it looks awesome, those bridges are going to be spectacular.

[Bob]

The 1931 bridge is coming together.  I found a detailed track plan (see photo) from which I was able to determine the angle the bridge piers are set relative to the mainline - about 33 degrees from the vertical.  I then cut a plastic guide with this angle, and used this to determine where to place the girders on the south-facing side of the bridge.  Having done this, I then used CA adhesive to attach the remaining girders to the aluminium channel that Lance used to provide integrity to the bridge.   Next up were the bridge shoes, which I weathered and applied rust while still attached to their sprues.  The bridge shoes were designed by Erik of Ngineer (Shapeways site), and as noted before he also designed the bridge piers to match the prototype.  I have begun gluing the shoes to the bottom of the girders, and the first several are shown here.  I am happy with how this is coming out - the piers need to be weathered, and I will likely need a variety of shims given slight fluctuations in height.  But, this should be manageable.  Merry Christmas everyone!
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[Erik aka Ngineer]

Every time you post here I can't wait to view it. It's really cool to be part of an awesome build like this!

[Bob]

In a previous post, I showed my first attempts to attach bridge shoes to the plate girders of the 1931 B&O (now CSX) bridge.  To do this, I simply glued shoes to the bottom of the girders using CA cement.  It quickly became apparent that this was not the right approach – the thinness of the girders meant that there was not much surface to which I could glue the shoes, and this also made it difficult to get everything square.  I reasoned I could either put a piece of rectangular styrene behind each girder to provide a wider surface to which the shoes could be glued, or I could glue the shoes directly to the top of the piers.  I decided that the second approach would be the easiest, the most stable, and would make it possible to have the shoes oriented correctly.  However, to do this I first needed to construct a jig so that I could reproducibly attach the shoes to the piers.

Image 1 shows the jig harness that was designed to fit over the top of a bridge pier (images 2 and 3).  I then placed this pier, which lacked bridge shoes, under the plate girders to which I attached shoes as shown in the previous post (image 4).  I then used strip styrene to mark the shoe boundaries and glued these to the jig harness.  After drying, I placed the completed jig atop the dozen remaining bridge piers, and used this jig as the guide so that the shoes could be glued to each pier in exactly the same location (image 5).

Once done, I placed the piers (with their attached shoes) under the bridge (bottom photo) and for the first time was able to remove the temporary wooden supports.  The piers are at a 33° angle from the vertical, just like the prototypical bridge.  I had to use cardboard shims to obtain the right height, but if I place an 1/8” piece of veneer on the Potomac river bottom, then I think the piers will then support the bridge at the correct height.  The bottom photo is also my first attempt using Helicon Focus – I took five, handheld iPhone images, changing the focus point in each.  I am quite pleased with the outcome.  I need to get better lighting to take better photos, and need to use a tripod, but this is not bad for a first attempt.  Next up is weathering the shoes and piers.

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[LIRR]

It’s coming along nicely...keep posting