Ballasted Deck Trestle

The bridge at Springfield Jct is an unknown structure to most, that crosses a mostly dry wash. I needed it to break up the bland scene of thick trees/foliage that will disguise the Siskiyou Sub actually being a stub track. On all my previous bridge builds I had cut out the full length of plywood roadbed when the time came to actually install the bridge. It was always a pain to cut, and without damaging anything. This time I wanted to preserve the integrity of the track already in place, and I tried a different method. Art helped me thin down the existing plywood layers from underneath with an oscillating tool. Then I used a combination of extruded foam and Sculptamold to rough in the scene. 

A facade deck would be layered onto the edge of the existing plywood roadbed. This was a bit more entertaining with the bridge on a curve as opposing sides were different lengths/spacing, and would not hold shape while gluing bowed deck sections.
The mockup:

I used SP Common Standards to figure construction and lumber standards. I ordered the scale lumber from Kappler, and used a Minwax walnut stain marker to represent the look of creosote. I built up a quick template to mass produce the bents, and another for the end railings as they ended up being tedious to build (then had to do them all twice due to measuring error).

The deck/handrail sections were glued with contact cement to allow time to position them. I realized halfway through the project that the prototype had raised the ballast at some point and cut the wood railings, replacing them with unistrut and cables. I ended up installing the wood railings on mine as I much preferred the original look, even though I still had to move forward with the raised deck. More extruded foam was used to fill in the large gaps below the timber bulkheads, to help calculate the length of the shorter bents, while preserving the needed slope of the bank. The wash will get an extra thick layer of dirt to basically hide all but a few of the concrete foundations. This is the only wood bridge I have built, and adds to the variety of different bridge types on the layout. 

Looking forward to when the deck can be ballasted.