Boltorr Brook Bridge in situ

There’s this thing about building your own railway.

1: There’s a lot to do
&
2: It’s only you who can do it

When I started this project I knew it wasn’t going to be up and running by April.

April 2018 maybe.

I’ve looked at it as a three year project. Hopefully trains will be running on it way before then. I’m thinking that this April may be possible for the track work to, um, work.

Establishing Boltorr Bridge is the last job that has to be done before the track can be laid.

I made the space for the bridge by laying the baseboard material, Homasote – a bit like SunDeala, across the gap so that both sides would be spot on. I then cut the board and fitted the bridge into the gap, spending a little time making sure the track would run level from the track bed, over the bridge, and onto Boltorr Road as smoothly as possible.

The bridge is actually going to function as a bridge and needs to look as if its foundations run to the centre of the earth. I’ve had to cut back the line of the embankment a bit to fit in some reasonable retaining walls and the bridge abutment.

I’d completed a little landscaping and planting in that area, but it was really done as a practice run. One thing I learned is that it won’t be a difficult job to blend it back in.

The actual track transition from ballast to bridge will be disguised by a wooden walkway on the western side – towards the observer. It looks as if I’ll need to build a handrail to stop permanent way workers going over the side of the bridge. Otherwise the structure will be left open with the river visible down through the ironwork.

Once the track is finally in place I’ll be installing checkrails over the bridge and the inside one will continue around the left-hand curve towards Boltorr which is the tightest radius in view. It should still be about the tightest curve a mainline engine would normally negotiate at about 15mph. But it would have just come out of a tunnel and be approaching a small station, so it shouldn’t look out of place.

I need to get the abutments in before fixing the bridge and track in place so I’m just going to extend the river back a few more inches so I can get a good foundation for them.

That’s enough about bridges for quite a while, I hope.