Cutting It Close

With space at a premium, John Allen took advantage of every square inch he had. Some tactics that he used back then run counter to things most of us do automatically today, such as setting the track back from the edge of the layout by a healthy amount, wherever practical, to prevent catastrophes. Yet, to make curves as broad as possible—and shave a few fractions of a percent off of the grades—John ran the track as close as possible to the edges of the layout in a number of places. Have a look at the siding along the front: the ties align with the edge of the plywood!



Elsewhere, tracks pass one another seemingly within a hair's breadth. For instance, there isn't much separating the three curves along the right side. As I was working on the track plan, I thought that his drawing was off, but the curves really are practically on top of one another.



A master at creating the illusion of depth, as well as a pioneer in forced perspective, John relied on sheer rock faces and stone retaining walls for visual separation in this area. Likely he added the plate girder bridge to break up what would otherwise be a vast vertical plane, thereby adding interest and improving realism. This rare view also highlights the steep grades on the G&D:



Unfortunately, John's modeling style creates a degree of grief for someone attempting to faithfully reproduce the Gorre & Daphetid in a smaller scale... like me. Here's the problem: as the size of the layout shrinks, tolerances become increasingly critical. And the area around the plate girder bridge immediately presented some problems.

After performing some practical tests with trains on track rolling through and beside a makeshift bridge (below), I learned that I'll need to make some subtle revisions to the placement of track in order to buy me a millimeter or two here and there—as it is, the bridge girders will be nearly flush with the sides of the track roadbed, and the outer girder will be exactly aligned with the very edge of the layout—John would be proud!



As compensation for the stress of having to deal with the close quarters, I was able to do the very first modeling for the layout: I built the plate girder bridge. John simply attached a pair of plate girders to the sides of his plywood subroadbed. I'm following a similar course; I'm attaching the girders from a Micro-Trains through girder bridge to the Rokuhan track roadbed. The straightaway at the bridge is shorter than the bridge track section, so I couldn't use the original decking. Just as well; John Allen's bridge is a ballasted deck type.

Since Rokuhan track geometry matches that of Micro-Track, I needed to slice 10 millimeters out of a 110mm piece of straight track in order to fit the space. (Modifying Rokuhan track will be the topic of the next post—the technique required is slightly different from that used for Micro-Track.) I then assembled the shortened straight track with the adjoining curves, and soldered the rail joints, as this would be a permanent assembly.



To make the bridge itself, I first sliced through the triangular gussets with a razor saw (above); then I clipped off the mounting tabs flush with the plates with rail nippers (below).



Next, I cut a strip of ribbed Evergreen sheet styrene slightly wider than the track roadbed to make the deck, then bonded everything together—track and all—in three steps: plate one to the deck; deck to the track (below); plate two to the deck.



Later I'll make abutments, add pedestals, paint and weather the bridge, and paint and re-ballast the track. I may even add a G&D logo to make the bridge truly authentic. That said, don't assume that I'll be slavishly adhering to the original layout; there will be many compromises and liberties that will be taken, some out of necessity and some by design.



Above is the finished bridge, and below it's posed on the layout with a train to emulate John's shot. Note one small departure from the original: the track is at a more appropriate height within my bridge. The plates are way too low on John's, which was done by necessity to hide the thick plywood subroadbed.



Make no mistake, I'm not complaining about the effort required to adapt the G&D to Z Scale successfully. Challenges such as these add zest to modeling, as problem-solving increases the level of satisfaction. I have no doubt that there will be more such challenges ahead.

Original Gorre & Daphetid images courtesy of Peter T. Prunka.

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