Friday, February 21, 2020

Installing the 200 ft BLMA bridge

These bridges come with some nice stainless steel walkways and railings.  The hand rails are painted an oxide red color that has a semi-gloss finish.

For me it did not seem right to have a bright or glossy finish on a bridge that could be 80 years old in my modeled era.  So I did the same thing that I had done on the 150 ft bridge before installing it  about a year ago on the Harney layout section.  I removed the walkways and air brush them flat oxide red.

The Micro Engineering track assembly completed in the LAST POST was attached to the bridge structure by placing a bit of clear E6000 adhesive on the tops of the bottom frame of the bridge and then holding with clamps as shown in this photo.  It was important to keep the track centered between the walkways.



I tested several of my largest freight cars for clearance rolling them through the bridge on the work bench before actually installing the bridge on the layout.

On the Harney layout section I had weathered the bridge with black acrylic wash before installing it but this time found out my weathering wash had dried out so I installed this bridge first and will weather it in place.   The track was then glued to the road bed and connected.

4 comments:

  1. Thanks for the tips, I’m planning on installing a pair of these bridges!

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    1. You are welcome Karl, glad you found this helpful.

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