Coal Banks Trestle: Decks & Railings
I chose Walthers Code 83 bridge track for my bridge. This product has nice detail and molded in guard rails in code 70. The track comes in 16″ pieces and includes filler ties for joining multiple segments and guard rail closure pieces. Also provided in the kit are short pieces of regular track with guard […]
Coal Banks Trestle: Girder Spans
A key characteristic of GN Bridges is the tapering of the span girder height to match the tower span. The stock MicroEngineering spans are straight and needed modification to achieve the GN style. This modification had to be repeated twelve times over so my answer is to build a jig. I am a big fan […]
Coal Banks Trestle: Benchwork
My model of the Coal Banks Bridge is over three feet long and I anticipated assembly and alignment of the spans and the towers was going to be tricky. I decided from the start to devise a way to build the bridge using a benchwork sub-assembly that allows the model to be built off layout […]
Coal Banks Trestle: GN Design Practices
Each railroad typically develops its own way of doing things and the GN was no exception. Even within the GN, there are variations which as a modeler, we can use to our advantage when we may not have all of the details on the prototype. The Coal Banks bridge is long gone now and I […]
Coal Banks Trestle: Introduction
One of the modeling jewels along the GN line from Great Falls to Havre, MT is the trestle over the Coal Banks Coulee. This massive steel trestle was typical of the structures needed by railroad construction engineers to cross valleys (a.k.a. coulees) that cut across the otherwise unremarkable prairie from North Dakota to the Rockies. […]