More work has been done on the bridge (that is actually the ends of where two bridges meet) I mentioned in a previous post. I hope the in position pictures help make some sense of my design choices.
When designing a model railroad many choices are faced. One of the first is whether to copy a section of the real thing or to make it all up. Of course, this choice is a sliding scale where the middle is a model not tied to a prototype but not completely made up by the modeller, phrases like "based upon ..." might be used in a description of a layout in between these points.
Because my N scale shelf layout is only loosely based upon a concept, much of the design has come out of my head. Especially seeing the concept I used as a basis was not a prototype but John Allen's Timesaver puzzle and only loosely so. As a result, the arrangement and make-up of structures has undergone a few iterations in an attempt to come up with something plausible that fits the style I wish to invoke. That style being a switching section in down town Chicago in the 1940s. And yet I model Union Pacific who didn't have rails in Chicago until almost the turn of the century when Union Pacific bought the Chicago and North Western Railroad. Hence this is not based on a prototype when the time period is included in the setting. As result of the style choice, replicating a Chicago skyline is a big factor determining what structures are used. Why Chicago? In it's time Chicago served a huge number of different roads and had the famous train served stockyard right in the city (only the gate to the Union Stockyards remain in the present day) and perhaps most of all, Jack Delano's excellent colour photography of Chicago in the 1940's, for example
Why so many iterations with the structures? In order to make something that is "realistic." This is where following a prototype has advantages: the buildings are laid out in such a way that they "work" in the day to day functions that buildings have to provide. To have a realistic building layout then is just a matter of copying the prototype building layout. I have seen layouts with coaling towers that have no method of being refilled, buildings that have no apparent access, roads that are not shown to go anywhere, etc. All of these may be acceptable breaks from reality but then don't necessarily fit with my idea of realistic (plus the phrases, "break from reality" and "realistic" don't seem to go together well...) As a result, I still have some more track to lay in order to supply coal to the coal tower, build some sort of access to the signal tower, and I am sure there will be other tasks in a similar vein that I have not thought of or encountered yet.
The design of this bridge structure is an attempt to work within the bounds of a layout that is only a foot wide. What does one do when the world ends or the layout edges are met? I have taken the attitude that as the layout represents a slice of a world, so to that world gets sliced at each edge of the layout. The bridge then is sliced at each end to line up with the edges of the layout. The bridge goes across the layout at an angle in order to draw the eye across the layout as the eye also moves backwards and forwards along the length of the bridge, trying to make the layout seem deeper than it really is.
Malkara School's annual scale model exhibition was worth the trip, if only to see what has changed since last time. Exhibition purchases include a Triang brand GWR Colette coach and an assembled Dapol Thatched Cottage, both 2nd hand. Post exhibition purchases include Roof Brown and Reefer White paint, 0.35mm wire for handrails for the bridge and more Atlas 33" metal wheel sets (still more needed to be totally metal in the N scale wheel department...)
Anyway, the photos of the bridge in situ that may or may not explain why it looks the way it looks
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