1. Crossing-length: 28 inches (that's 60 feet in reality)
2. No bridge supports in-between (it should be easy to duck under it)
3. Belgian example, end of the fifties.
It became apparent the bridge wasn't available at any hobby manufacturer, so I needed to design and build one myself. When I searched for a Belgian example, I couldn't find one. An existing bridge would inspire my own design. As an example, I chose the bridges at Antwerp-Dam, mainly because this type of bridge was very common, but also because I have been crossing this bridge myself a thousand times, on my way to work. I designed my own, very similar bridge after taking numerous pictures of the existing bridges.
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
The drawing was made by computer, on a 1/87 scale (HO), so the drawing could be used as a blueprint for building the actual bridge:
Before building I wanted to construct it from brass profiles. I started with these, anyway: part of the bridge bottom was build from soldered profiles. This proved to be a very difficult way for construction (heating one connection had other connections loosen ... I didn't have the right equipment for this sort of constructing) and it would be very pricy. I then decided to use styrene profiles for the rest of the bridge. These are far cheaper, and faster and easier to use, and are (almost) equally beautiful. On the next pictures you can see different phases of construction:
 |
 |
 |
 |
On October 10th 2002 the bridge was finished (besides catenaries, to be build later): it contains about 900 parts. I spent about 200 Euro on materials and parts, paint, glue, ... The result is seen below:
 |
 |
At the end of 2004 I (and some visitors) already managed to bump into the bridge several times, with sometimes-disastrous consequences. Before performing the third restoration, I decided to build a sturdy transparent PVC protection first. This was constructed together with the fascia:
|
|
| ©2005 Gerolf Peeters - updated 30.05.2007 | See: Retaining walls |
