Lift-span Bridge

Added gangway and paint to the towers.

Created traffic lights with large 5 mm LEDs (easier to see from a behind point of view). They turned out over scale, but I am sure the Ballina Museum can live with it.

The more you build the more impressive this project becomes. Looking forward to seeing it in its completed form and perhaps a video of it working. Great stuff.

Martin W

Thanks Martin W, I sure hope it all works out okay.

I discovered before installing the towers that once they are in, the span cannot be removed for repairs. There won't be enough room to pass above the pulley wheels. So I cut off the lateral bumper rollers (the hidden side) and replaced them with removable ones.

Prepared road base. Installed the necessary span and traffic lights wiring along bridge girders. Assembled road, towers and traffic lights in one go.

Took me a few days to add all the matchstick posts and split bamboo skewer railings.

Tilted display table on edge to ease the working on the wiring harness. Wires from bridge got terminated and then harnessed to where the Control Box will be.

Took me a few days to add all the matchstick posts and split bamboo skewer railings.

I would have taken months to do this and still probably still never got it right !

Ian.

Ha ha ha. Thanks Ian for compliment.

Then I had the fiddly job of painting the railings.

I do not plan to paint the bridge to appear weathered, but as if brand new and unpolluted. It is something I learnt to appreciate from doing some architectural rendering in my youth. So, I gave the rest of the bridge a cement grey colour. The road will be painted to appear as concrete (with gravel).

Throughout this project I continue to do Internet research. A friend emailed me a photo taken of a computer screen by her iPhone. It revealed a few things I was still not clear about. There was the matter of what did the swing-gates look like. The scale of the cars is known, but how did they look in comparison to the whole bridge. Finally, what did the concrete road look like from above.

Decided to splatter dark grey paint onto the cement colour. It turned out horrendous. So then I used the dry brush method to lighten up the dark patches. Afterwards, I kept alternating between dark and light paint with a fine brush until I was happy with the results.

Painting the span took longer than painting the rest of the road. It was difficult to get into the central areas. The edges of the span and bridge have a metal plate (silver painted area). The hole you see on edge of road is for the fine (0.7 mm) bridge cable which goes through the display table.

Peter,

Inspired by your friend's screen-shot; I had a look on Google Earth

There is a lot of detail available in the 'Street View'

Keep up the great work !!

MichaelG.

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For iOS users: https://earth.app.goo.gl/QKWni #googleearth

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 26/01/2018 21:38:37

Hello MichaelG.

Thanks for response. For some reason I could not open link. I have seen the Google earth views, and they are getting better in time.

My main research was the gates. They were in many years ago (now replaced with boom-gates), and I only had a few shallow angle and long distant shots of them. My friend new I was searching for those gates, and sent me the photo. It's just that this photo also revealed other features too.

Hope no one was hurt in the multi car wreck seen in your 4th pic Peter!

Just kidding, the bridge looks great.

This is superb model work. I admire it, thank you.

Michael W

This is indeed a superb model, a most interesting build thread.

Nice to see something a little different.

BB

Wow, thank you Jeff Dayman, Michael W, and BB for your kind words.

Since the console is to be a wiring diorama of sorts, I decided to dramatize it a bit by adding some paint here and there.

Creating a new wiring harness for the console.