Trestle Part 2: Rebuilding the dry stream bed

Work continues on the weekends toward getting the new trestle installed, at least when I'm not too busy with other more pressing yard work. But before I can start construction on the trestle itself there are a number of preparation tasks. The first one was deciding on a bridge design as it will be right in the middle of the trestle.

An overview of the site prior to construction this weekend.

I took a lot of factors into consideration such as material (wood vs. metal), design (truss vs. girder, top deck vs. through deck), and construction complexity (homemade design vs. something manufactured). In the end I decided I wanted something very simple here that doesn't detract from the trestle. So I decided to repurpose my existing side girder bridge, which I will replace with a professionally made Howe truss bridge which will look great in that location. I've placed an order for the new bridge (an early birthday present for myself) and it probably will be here in about four or five weeks—hopefully I'll have my trestle done by that time!

The next step was to clean up the lower half of the dry stream bed. Moles have wrecked havoc in this area over the past few years, and a lot of dirt has become mixed in with the river gravel. I needed to pull everything out of the way, put down a layer of hardware cloth, and then rebuild the stream taking into consideration the locations of the new bridge piers. Laying hardware cloth is something I really wish I would have thought of when I first built the dry stream bed.

A top view of the existing span prior to construction. The 1x4 board underneath the track is 36" long, the same as the side girder bridge that will be going in here. I decided to widen the stream bed here as the support piers will be slightly wider apart than the bricks are in this photo.

I pulled all the large boulders out of the way and then scraped up as much of the rounded gravel as I could. It was really messy as so much dirt had been mixed in, so I built a screen and washed all the gravel before reusing it.

I also widened the area by a few inches on each side, then leveled the surface. This photo shows the site right before the hardware cloth went down.

Due to the widening of the stream bed I now have a small pile of dirt and I'm not yet sure where this is going.

After the hardware cloth went down, I then worked on arranging the boulders. I searched around the yard in order to find a few more to complete both banks. Once I was happy with the layout, I then back filled dirt on the banks, and then returned the washed gravel to the stream bed.

I'm using bricks just temporarily as bridge piers. These will be replaced with trestle bents.

Here's a top view of the side girder bridge in place. I'm probably going to shift it just an inch or so to the right.

The project area at the end of the day. The newly improved stream bed is a wider, much cleaner, and now impervious to mole attack from underneath.

Here's another view of the work area. You can tell from this photo that I still need to clean up that bridge and touch up the paint—another task to add to the backlog.

And one more view from the side. Doesn't that gravel look great?