Trestle Part 4: Starting to build it in place

It was a very busy weekend between some home repair projects, general yard work, and a trip to IKEA. But I was able to find some time to do a little work on the PE&A. In addition to finishing the retaining wall extension, I did some repair work on the box girder bridges and started building the trestle.

This the the yard junction, site of the retaining wall extension to replace the bricks.

After removing the track and scraping the clean gravel out of the way, I dug out enough soil to slide the first of the two new wall sections into place. Each one is offset just a few degrees.

Here is a reverse angle view showing both of the new sections in place with a brick at the end as an anchor which will be hidden from view.

This shows the finished wall, after back filling, covering with gravel and placing the track back in place. A viewer standing ten feet away now sees a gently curving wall following the curve of the track.  

A new fire lookout tower popped up on the PE&A.

Here's a picture of the lookout tower in progress. This was built from a kit and I finished it a couple weeks ago, but it hadn't made it outside until this weekend.

Another project was to pull out my box girder bridges for cleaning, repair and repainting. A few ribs had come off which needed replaced, and fortunately I still have plenty of styrene on hand. After repairs, I did some touch up painting on both box girders as will as my side girder bridge.

I've been experimenting with what lettering on the box girder bridges might look like. This is just a mock-up using paper letters; once I decide on a size and font I like I'll order some vinyl letters for a permanent solution.

I needed to build one more bridge pier 11 3/4" tall.

Here is the newest bridge pier in place with a board standing in for the missing bridge. You can see underneath the track I've placed markers about 8 1/2 inches apart where each bent will go.

Next I started building the trestle starting from the bridge over the stream bed. You can see here that I've partially buried a brick to support each bent. And I'm using the weight of bricks on top to help hold pieces in place while the glue sets.

Here is a close-up showing placement of the strings on top of the bents. The stringers are all 3/4" high, but the width varies as I'm using leftover wood scraps from another project.

I then added braces on both sides. At this point I began to think I've placed the bents too far apart. I'm also now questioning my plan of staggering the braces instead of lining them up. So I'm going to consider this a first draft; between now and next weekend I will think about what edits I want to make and I will likely rebuild this.