Re-working the Melarkey Street overpass.

The Melarkey Street / US 95 overpass in Winnemucca is intended to be the western exit from the layout for the Western Pacific line.  From here the line enters the helix down to the staging yard.  This is a common arrangement on model railroad layouts and in this case it resembles the prototype location.    I have used this same setup just a few feet away with the Southern Pacific line exiting under the Interstate 80 overpass.   I have never been entirely happy with the the way the WP track left the layout under the US 95 overpass in Winnemucca.   I suspect this has kept me from really finishing the Winneumcca area.

Here is a view of the US 95 overpass right after I built it back in July of 2017.  It seemed fine then but I had not yet built the sky board.  After the sky board was in place I was not as happy with this arrangement.

Here is what the area looked like after the sky board was installed.  I did not like the fact that the inside of the helix could be so easily seen and the gap between the bridge and the sky board.

So I reshaped the hillside just a bit to align the bridge to be parallel with the sky board and painted the area of the sky board that would be under the bridge flat black.

This view is from the other side of the sky board inside the helix.  Using a scrap of PVC drain pipe I made this tunnel liner.   I painted the inside of the tunnel liner and the bench around it a flat black color.

The track in the foreground is the SP track which enters the helix at the Interstate 80 overpass.

I replaced the bridge columns on the outside with a solid bridge abutment and have started to build a new bridge.

This photo shows how it looks now.  I am patching up the scenery and need to finish the bridge but already like this better.