Thanks, Andrew. The scenery, as such
, has been in place as long as that anywhere else on the layout: I just haven't had the time to finish it. Actually, the scene is meant to be a combination of my interpretations of several prototype scenes. There are quite a few relatively high railroad bridges around here: a good nearby example is the CNR bridge over the Twenty Mile Creek, near Jordan Station, but there are others. The one at Paris, Ontario, over the Grand River or another over the same river at Cayuga spring to mind. The latter, now out of service, was the inspiration for the lower bridge in the photo, although no attempt was made to duplicate the prototype. The upper bridge was probably influenced by the Paris bridge, but was more my response to overcoming the geographical obstacle that I created when I opted to make the climb to the second level of the layout a visible one, rather than a hidden helix. As for my "mountain range", my hope is to make it appear, when fully sceniced, similar to the view of the Niagara Escarpment as seen from the shore of Lake Ontario (or like what you'd see if you looked to your left if you were riding an Amtrak or VIA train to Trawna [Toronto, for all of you not from these parts] from Niagara Falls.) The plasterwork to the right in the second photo scales out to about 250' above the riverbed, well within the height of the real thing, and I hope that the addition of trees will "soften" its craggy appearance. Another thing I hope to accomplish with the finished scenery is to disguise the exagerrated appearance of the grades, as the lower one dropping in such close proximity to the rising upper one makes both appear even steeper than they are. The lower track drops at a fairly steady 2.5%, while the upper rises at about 2.8%, with a short section just before the lower end of the bridge even greater than that. While both grades are a real test for locomotives, that short "extra-steep" section quickly lets an operator know if he's got enough power to conquer the entire grade, which is laid out around two complete horseshoe curves, the first of which is on the high bridge in these photos. Total length of the climb is in excess of 45'.
I hope to finish my time-consuming home renovation project before fall, so that I can get out and start collecting weeds and such for some sustained tree-making projects.
Here are a couple of views of another bridge near the top of the long grade: this one is laid out on a very wide-radius "S" bend.
Looking south
Looking north
Wayne
, THANKS for the link, i thought the layout was done NICE:thumb:...but HONESTLY, i wasn't as impressed with that layout as I AM with YOURS!:thumb:. DON'T GET ME WRONG, yes the guy can model, far better then I
