This picture shows how I lay out the girders. I make a layout on top of the track with the girders, and glue the long girders to the cross girders upside down. The above shows how I am laying out the structure. This structure is my newer version taking from resin castings.
A close up:
So far I've only made casting of the long girders. For the cross girders and columns, I will scratch build from styrene shapes. My columns are pretty thin in cross section, so I'm not sure how a casting would work.
The girders are made up of a sandwich of a center piece of 0.040" styrene and two castings. The flanges, of which only the bottom flange is on now, is made from 0.030" styrene. The overall width is about 3/8" of an inch on the flanges. A little wider than prototype, but since it is structural I didn't want to go too thin.
This section is built on a piece of benchwork that hangs from benchwork on either side so I can be removed in a hurry. So, I am not going to attach this structure to the other structure. It will be stand-alone.
Also, congratulations to the Bears on the home opener win. A TV in the layout room, while not the most accurate scenic backdrop, is a must have (sorry for not having the Bears actually on, this was taken after the win)!
And another photo I had just taken:
The building on the right is an Ameritown kit and the one on the left is one of my first scratch building efforts. I'm getting the itch to redo this block and combine these two .... but I've got a lot of projects so that might take a while. I guess a good goal is to always strive to improve and learn.
Also, I was fortunate enough to finally be able to call into Model Rail Radio, a model railroad post cast conducted in a radio show style format hosted by Tom Barbalet. Its a great show and I would highly recommend listening and Skyping in if you can. The address is: http://www.modelrailradio.com/ . Tom does a fantastic job in promoting the hobby and creating a virtual hobby show where folks can just drop in and chat.
