Steel cable suspension bridge

[Kaine]

I ordered a bridge lately.
There are 4 lenghts available for single - dual or triple track.
I choose the long twin tower for dual track, with a total lenght of 144" (365,7 cm) and a with of 14" (35,5 cm)
Other bridges and dimensions can be found here: http://www.choochoostuff.com
As it was raining yesterday I decided to take a look at it and start assembly.

 

[Kaine]

Piers assembled

Towers assembled

Deck one pre assembled

Pre assembly close up

Deck one sandwiched between pier and tower

 

[Kaine]

I had the option to choose between screws and rivets.
I did one bridge pier with screws and one with rivets.
After looking at the piers finished I went for rivets only because I think they look better.

 

[Kaine]

As my living room table is not long enough further assembly has to be done outside.

 

[Rhinochugger]

That's a monster :love:

Where's Nico? :callme: That could solve his K27 diversion problem

 

[nygma]

This is massive. Keep posting!

 

[Kaine]

Finished the bridge this afternoon

 

[Kaine]

This gives a better idea how massive the thing is.

all sugestions on painting and making a deck are welcome.

 

[Phil]

WOW!!!

 

[BarmyAndy]

That is massive. How hard was it to assemble?

 

[Kaine]

That is massive. How hard was it to assemble?

It may look difficult but was verry easy to assemble.
The instructions are easy to understand and the drawings are helpful.
The only dificulty I encountered was when a plastic bag with small pinlocks was blown flew off the workbench by the wind and landed in the grass. I have spend half an hour on my knees with a magnet trying to retrieve them all.
Found them all.

 

[Steve]

Brilliant Kaine , cant wait to see it in place

 

[mbiff]

nice

 

[Woderwick]

Certainly unique. You dont see a lot of rail suspension bridges.

 

[Woderwick]

Steve's right, and they usually have an arched deck. I just did n't want to take the jam outta the man's doughnut. That said, it'll still look impressive when it's in place.

 

[Granitechops]

This gives a better idea how massive the thing is.

all sugestions on painting and making a deck are welcome.

As the vertical suspension cables dont look to be taught, ie not taking a lot of the weight
If it were mine, I would design the deck, if possible with some sort of vertical flanges to introduce some horizontal rigidity into the structure,
downward flanges would probably be an impractibility
but if the track was laid in a shallow 'U' shaped trough, with maybe fine gravel to hold it in place, maybe that would work
Pretty impressive looking !!

 

[Woderwick]

:holdon:. . . . and Rule 8 will also apply .......
and it's a good effort
and it's his railway.
Protypical?? How about running German and US trains on the same layout at the same time.
It ain't prototypical either.
Once again Rule 8.
:-(Anyway..who thought up that Rule?)

Absolutely right my pedigree chum.

 

[Kaine]

Thanks for the commends.
The bridge will be situated at approximately 3,5 meter (11-1/2 ft) to the right from the and of the bridge in the picture, and the deck will be 2,5 cm (1") higher.
I also still have to cast pier bases in concrete and bridge end abutments.
The deck ends will then be anchored with bolts in the abutments.
And only after this I will be able to adjust or fine tune the vertical cables.
This can be done at top or bottom.

 

[Andrew Foster]

An impressive bridge indeed. A full size bridge would probably have rather more lateral bracing towards the tops of the towers to stiffen them against wind loading, and a deeper deck structure to prevent fluttering. However, this isn't the Tacoma Narrows bridge, and modeller's licence definitely applies.

Something to watch when designing the deck is to make sure it is well drained, and can't collect water where it will quietly corrode things out of sight. A small amount of camber introduced when the drop cables are tensioned might help with that. Any dissimilar metal joints need to be well protected, of course.

Are the towers capped to prevent water entry? Even if they are, a sheltered breather hole is a good idea to keep them vented.

I read somewhere that a train on the Niagara Falls bridge would develop a 'bow wave' in the deck structure ahead of it as it moved across. Roebling was one of the first to realise the importance of deck stiffness, so perhaps that observation was made near the end of the life of the bridge when the loads had increased to the point that a new bridge was needed anyway.

Andrew