Good morning, all.  Hadn't seen that Far Side cartoon, Dave. Some parts came in yesterday, so the late afternoon was spent doing house wiring and plumbing.  I'll be up late fetching family from the airport, but happily everything seems organized for my wife's postponed craft fair tomorrow.  More 1:1 track work Monday, haying season starts Wednesday; My 2nd wife is the only farmer in town who still puts up hay, and I'm a supporter.

I've done the outdoor chores. Checking the Forum and elsewhere on the net, then going up to the layout to start on the new model parts. Will be worth a post if they work as I hope.

Good morning, Jeff, Bob and later arrivals.  79F is forecast for the NH seacoast later.  It's "cloudy bright" in Kodak terms outside, but rain is forecast for late afternoon and off and on through Saturday. My wife's craft fair has been postponed to Sunday.

No modeling since I last posted, but 3 days of 1:1 track work at Seashore.  I learned the basics of running a tie crane and worked with another operator to get us started with a Geismar MRT tie inserter. It has about 12 important controls, where our little Section Gang Machine does the basic job with only 4. But Geismar gave us the manual for their later, even more complicated MRT-2 and there was enough in common.

I'll look around the Forum while I work on Selectboard minutes, then probably outdoor work before the rain arrives.

Good morning, all.  On my way out I thought to open the lounge: Urn is heating up with Tie Crane blend, hot water for tea or cocoa, fruit, cereal, rolls and pastries on the counter.

The NH seacoast is clear and headed for the 70s. Modeling today is unlikely: first to Seashore for track work, then home to a Selectboard meeting postponed due to Monday's holiday.

Good afternoon, all. Weather as per Dave above.  Meditating on veterans, my HS class was too young for Viet Nam, too old for the first Gulf War.  Some older friends did serve in Viet Nam. A classmate lost his son to the Beirut bombing. Thanks to all.

I spent the morning on Seashore paperwork, the afternoon so far cutting deadwood in my orchard, with interludes introducing our 1 y.o. indoor cat to the middle-aged outdoor cat. There had been hissing and threats earlier this spring, but today they have been peaceful, though distant.

Progress is progress.  Do you have any small files with smooth narrow sides?  One could even up the bottoms of the fancy interior walls in place. I have a 4" knife file with a blank back edge that I use that way.

Good morning, all.  I like your photo, Rick.  The NH seacoast has just moved on from a week of rain/damp.  But the break doesn't look long enough to start haying yet.  In a normal year the first field gets done before June.

Good morning!  The urn is loaded with Track Chisel blend and hot water is warming up.  Fruit, cereal, fresh bread and sweet pastries on the counter with juice and fresh milk.  What the cook may do awaits the cook showing up.

It isn't raining or even cloudy over the lower Merrimack Valley. Temperatures are forecast to reach 60F this afternoon and the 70s later this week! My blueberries aren't blue yet but as usual with a damp spring, they will be abundant.  I should run the mower once the grass dries off this afternoon, but otherwise today I'll be working on the layout.

Thanks, Tom.  Should you ever visit Maine, the WW&F and its rehabilitated bridge are about an hour beyond Portland and far enough inland to avoid the tourists and shoppers along US-1. And for teakettle fans, they are well along scratchbuilding a 1:1 Forney (yes, I'm a member, no, the trolley museum keeps me too busy to go up there and volunteer).

Good morning, Jim & crew. Unlike Florida, the NH seacoast is in the mid-50s, overcast with occasional glimpses of the sun and a chance of a shower later.  I've got my bills paid, next will be visiting my bank, then Amesbury Industrial Supply. Probably some model work this afternoon, but then dinner with (so the young couple says) our future in-laws. Time will tell...

Looks good. My email asking the HUB Division list about Godspeed Machine hasn't gotten any answers. I'll try a couple of FB groups.

I made a quick pass over the Wiscassett, Waterville & Farmington boxed pony truss thread :

Plans of their bridge, as installed, are on page 19: https://forum.wwfry.org/index.php/topic,2553.270.html

Useful photos of the trusses being assembled begin on page 10. Photos of the assembled trusses, upright and unsheathed, are posted between pages 15 and 22.  There are also links to issues of The Newsletter of the National Society for the Preservation of Covered Bridges, Inc. with content about the Moose Brook Pony Truss Bridge of Gorham, NH (original location when it was a B&M standard gauge bridge).

Not sure, Dave. The last surviving B&M boxed pony truss in Rollinsford NH has sloping ends, as did one in Lebanon NH I found a photo of, so Howe Truss is a possibility. But many others had squared ends like my model. A website calls that a Flat Truss, but their diagram puts all the diagonals in tension. That's reasonable if diagonals are steel rods, but not for wood.



Aisle end fastened down with a flathead wood screw into the core of the abutment.  Originally I covered the screw head with grout sand, but then I had to take the bridge out and haven't re-covered it.

---

21-Mar-2017: The boxed pony truss is installed and lightly weathered with A&I. I'll do some testing out-of-place before I try to paint a centerline, or add anything like tire marks or cracked boards.



I tried to put myself in the shoes of a Division Superintendent who's getting an earful about the narrow lanes and danger to pedestrians, but knows this bridge won't be replaced till Beacon Hill gets involved: "Ed, you know the black and yellow paint you have for crossing gates? Send Billy's gang to paint that curb the next warm day."

The sanded grout paving looks a little rough when magnified. This might be helped by adding another coat and smoothing it with a putty knife while it's still wet. In the process of trying to make oil stains down the center of each lane, I found that applying plain 70% isopropyl alcohol darkens the grout consderably.

Michael Hohn asked:

QuoteNice looking model. WV has a few one-lane bridges and I would not be surprised if a few survived in New England.
The prototype photo posted earlier has some squarish panels on the inner sides. Do you think they were removable for inspection?

21-Mar-2017: Thanks, Mike. The HAER text says the square panels are plywood repairs; I haven't heard from any B&M employees who actually worked on boxed pony truss bridges or wound up with as-built plans or photos when Billerica Shops were cleaned out. The rest of the HAER photos demonstrate that the lower inside parts of the housing took a beating, and that the inside boarding was divided horizontally. Inspection/repair would certainly have been done from the road deck when possible.

[edit later] A larger image of the (RR) East side on the HAER site shows a few boards that are continuous from top to bottom. So apparently all the boards on the West side and almost all on the East got damaged and replaced. Guess I'll need to model that.

Orionvp17 (Pete) commented:

QuoteLooks good to me, James!
I remember a lot of very narrow streets in the Boston area, so tell people to drive carefully. At least these aren't clogged with snow

13-Apr-2017: The Chipman St. boxed pony truss overpass is pretty much finished. Last month, I'd gone over the sides and roadway with A&I. I used a candle to make stack blast stains over the active tracks. I was careful not to char any of the thinner bits of wood. Then I toned it down a bit with a plastic brush.



Then several weeks overseas intervened. Today I made a try at modeling repairs and damage on the inside sheathing. I used a hobby knife to cut the joint where boards along the bottom had been replaced. I highlighted the cuts with a sharp pencil. Then I dented some boards with the end of a 4" knife file, and cut one partly loose - it's about an inch in front of the Checker Cab, but it's barely visible. Then I used the pencil to make tire marks on the boards in a number of places.



Most of the wear & tear went on the side that's next to the traffic. I did do a little on the sidewalk side; I'm thinking about dinging up the curbs like they'd been jumped a few times.

Looking back at this picture, the figure looks Andre The Giant big compared to the bus and cab. Maybe I wasn't as far off as I first thought.

12-Sep-2017 Bror Hultgren commented: Link works 5-2025:

QuoteEvidently a boxed pony truss bridge (one of eight) is being donated to the 2 foot gauge WW&F.

https://fundrazr.com/NarrowBridgeAhead?ref=ab_9Gfqbj5TPBO9Gfqbj5TPBO

12-Sep-2017: Yes; work is ongoing to push the railhead another mile or so towards Waterville and Farmington.


13-May-2018: Bror Hultgren followed up:

QuoteBump.. From the pics it looks like the original Howe truss was rebuilt into some other type of truss....Brown Truss? Current status on the WW&F:

but his link is for North Shore Model RR Club members only.

13-May-2018: Interesting. I don't have a North Shore MRC login, but in 2018 the Covered Bridge Society had what looked like the original document. Alas, I can't find it in 2025, but you might get somewhere by asking:

http://www.coveredbridgesociety.org/

One of the opposing diagonals was visible in the post-arson pictures, making me think they were added by the B&M. The Berlin line was upgraded circa WWII to take 2-10-2s whose weight distribution had been adjusted.

http://forum.wwfry.org/index.php/topic,2553.new.html

The WW&F's forum (still valid in 2025, 56 pages) has much better images, showing that the space between the main diagonals varies; the counter-diagonals get bigger from the ends to the middle, so it's possible those at the ends were completely burned. If I'd had those when I started, I'd have at least thought about building one span with its sheathing in the process of being renewed.

21-Mar-2017: Having spent a week away from home and another week on Town Meeting season, I got back to the bridge the previous weekend:



I checked widths before paving: I won't be putting the bus and truck next to each other when showing the layout. The deck is 25 feet wide, 20:20 hindsight says 28' or 30'. I painted the deck with yellow glue, put the sidewalk curb in place and then sprinkled on 'Raven' grout sand. Also, somewhere earlier in the build a warp left one end with about 3/16" of twist relative to the other. The bridge needs to be easily removable, so I put on my thinking cap:



3/32" brass bar with 1/16" rod soldered in one hole, the other hole drilled #53 and tapped 1-72 (much simpler to have had a 1-72 nut handy, but it would have taken a couple of days to get one).



A locating stud fixed to the backdrop will hold that corner down on the abutment. The other end also needed to be held down.

I was going to show it in the next post, but must take the necessary picture before continuing.

17-Feb-2017: Bruce, that does indeed look like the same kind of bridge. A couple of boxed pony truss RR bridges over streams survive on the B&M's Berlin NH line - it was abandoned before 2000 but the bridges were retained through the rail-trail conversion.

One of the Berlin NH branch bridges was dismantled and repaired by historic bridge fans. It's now in service on the 2-foot gauge Wiscasset, Waterville & Farmington line in Alna, ME.

I'm not quite ready for final assembly - needs NBWs, roofs for the truss enclosures and the outrigger braces. But I'll leave it on the RR for tomorrow's op session.



Unless I use something like a GoPro, this is all anyone will ever see of the floor framing (the NBWs will only be of interest to AP evaluators). But it clears AAR Plate C, sits properly on the abutments and piers, and exposes a good-looking amount of floor beam. And it looks like I (a one-time Civil E student) would dare to walk under it. So the basics are satisfied.

20-Feb-2017: In the era I'm modeling, the B&M's capital assets were maintained in fairly good condition. So I'm not trying to model the makeshift repairs and broken boards in the HAER photos. But it's a working bridge, it has to show history to fit in its setting.

The history I'm imagining has it built around 1890, probably using Chestnut timbers. The boxes only protect the trusses, so replacement of floor planks and timbers probably started within 10 years. After the Chestnut Blight passed through during WWI (here), creosoting plants were built and their products were used for repairs and rebuilds. By the 1950s, the floor would have been all creosoted, with parts between 1 and maybe 20 years old. The trusses are probably all creosoted by now, but with the boxes intact you can't tell.



Visitors won't see the floor system unless I turn the bridge over, but since I'm thinking about AP evaluation, I can't just spray it monotone 'creosote' color. I was worried about warping with A&I, and I've successfully used Minwax Dark Walnut for creosoted wood elsewhere.

Note: when looking for how to thin Minwax, I found unhappy postings about Minwax having changed formulas. I've got 3/4 of a quart, which should do the remainder of the RR, but YMMV.

I had drawn plank joints on the plywood floor in pencil. I tried full-strength stain in the upper RH corner, which will be on/behind the abutment. It hid the pencil lines completely. So I set a dish of mineral spirits beside the can of stain. Some timbers are getting full-strength stain. The deck and the rest of the timbers are getting a brush dipped in stain first, then mineral spirits. I may come back later with some Ebony stain to detail a few timbers replaced in the past year or two.

The diluted stain has exaggerated the grain of the plywood, which I'll remember when I next cut something from it. But the timbers look good enough to proceed, fixing up the 'floor grain' later.

21-Feb-2017: It's almost time for NBWs: 1.25" bolts holding up the floor beams and 1.75" tension rod ends in each truss bay, both with square washers. Nothing of the correct size on hand, so time to order. But Tichy's site gives the same dimensions for three different part numbers: 8035, 8082 and 8143 are all described as 3" bolt, 6" washer. From the site's picture, the first two are much smaller. Could anyone having any of these and a caliper handy post the real or scale dimensions?

Later that day, Don Tichy got back to me about my question above - he referred me to the HO catalog link, which is correct where the web store descriptions aren't. I ordered #8016 (1" bolt) and #8034 (1.75" bolt).

This afternoon I built one of the 'roof' pieces for the truss enclosures. I used .040 x .375 styrene for the top and .010 x .040 for the trim boards. Gluing the trim in the right place was pretty fiddly; it would have been easier if I'd had .015 x .040 or even .020 x .040 stock.



Once you've got the roof held against the truss assembly, you can use bits of wood to hold the trim strips in position while gluing. I applied MEK with a brush. I need a deeper MEK container to fill my old capillary applicator from - none were handy.

This photo also shows some roughness left from filing, along with some paint-covered wood fuzzies. I used a brass brush to remove these from all of the outside surface and the upper part of the inner. We'll see how well they pass for 'old vehicle scrapes' once it's assembled; I can always brush the lower part if I don't like them.



This shows the stained floor system and the unpainted truss roof from the visitor's side.

Orionvp17 (Pete) approved:

QuoteThis all looks good to me, James.
 Congratulations!

desertdrover (Louis) agreed:

QuoteLooking good James. As you know a picture always shows you what needs to be fixed, or re-tuned over. But in your case it's all easy fixes. This project
appears to be a fine looking overpass IMO.

deemery (Dave) commented:

QuoteYou'll want black tire rubs underneath those vehicle scrapes

22-Feb-2017: Thanks, Pete & Louis. Dave, I agree. I think I'll try a model tire with paint on it (on scraps first). If that doesn't work out, then maybe pencil.

This afternoon and evening the sub-assemblies lost their independence:



Initially, I applied glue to the tops and upper ends of the floor beams, and the edge of the roadway. I'd had those little 'tool dealer' ratchet bar clamps for more than a year; they were very handy even though this was their first use.



Then I added the 6x8 outrigger braces. The roadway guard timbers are glued to both the roadway and the sides. So far the joint seems pretty durable. Finally, I airbrushed more EL Gray on the truss enclosure roofs.

The bridge won't really be finished till I get the NBWs installed, but I'll probably do a little weathering and detailing in the mean time.

15-Feb-2017: Thanks, Dave.  I was browsing RR-Line while glue dried on the first stage of the flooring system:



I drew the floor plank joints in pencil, rather than add a layer of scribed sheetwood to the lamination. The 0.7mm lead I used didn't make much of a depression in the plywood, so putting the base color and weathering on this will be tricky. And I wish I'd used six stringers rather than five.

deemery (Dave) commented:

QuoteA lot of the bridge plans I've studied have two stringers under the rail (with a small space between for drainage). You could add more stringers, this looks a
bit "light" to me.

16-Feb-2017: Dave, this bridge is road-only. If I ever put trolley tracks in Bexley, the line down to the harbor will pass over the B&M at the tunnel farther east.

Last night I finished installing the floor beams, including the outriggers that will carry the truss braces. This morning I'm fitting the trusses to the floor:





The floor beams that are square to the sides are hung from the bottom of the trusses. Those at an angle (and the cutoff ends of others above the piers) will bear on cribbing atop the masonry bridge piers and abutments.



I didn't get the same projection on all the floor beams, so filing is required to make the floor/truss joint stand up to handling. But I won't glue them together till everything is stained/painted. First, I'll get the wood bearing pieces and cribbing atop the piers worked out.

miekec commented:

QuoteNice! Glad to see that the cutting mat is coming in handy too.

Ray Dunakin commented:

QuoteLooking good!

wvrr (Chuck) commented:

QuoteInteresting bridge, James. I really like these types of unique structures. Looking forward to seeing the completed model!

Dutchman (Bruce) commented:

QuoteThe logging railroads of Pennsylvania had a number of those boxed 'through' truss bridges. Here is a favorite "oops" photo. I look forward to your build, James.