As we have now crossed over on our way to Weigh Scales, we have to build our bench work at a higher elevation and hang it off the exterior wall. We have to adjust our construction approach as the wall is precast concrete. Pat Mitchell, a friend up in Maryland, told us how he is doing it on his Proto 48 layout and we adapted his method for our application. You can see Rich Feller working on the subroadbed. He is a great friend and carpenter and he is responsible for most of the work here. We dropped a support bolted to the wall and then nailed a stub to the side. Later he put a cross member in place, using a string line to be sure they were straight. Over his shoulder you can see the completed Weigh Scales benchwork. You can see the level we used to be sure we were okay. Also the paper diagram on the floor was used to size the cross members and locate where we wanted to hang them. We are coming up on the Narrows and once we reach there, we will have to stop work on the branch and go back to working on the main line plus complete filling in the branch up to Weigh Scales.

Bridging a doorway

Well, we now have to get past a doorway as we leave Paxinos heading East. Next stop is Weigh Scales but first we have to create a duck under as we jump from one wall to another. I made an assembly that can be removed in the case that the refrigerator in that small room has to be replaced. It has a false bottom to allow me to run some wires under the riverbed. First we made the road bed out of plywood to be sure everything was on a consistent grade(2%). Then we cut out the center section and placed the bridge piers there. Mistake number one was forgetting that the deck girder requires piers to go up to the level of the track. So, we will have to make some future adjustments. I will show the completed bridge installation in a future post.