MURRAY RIVER BRIDGE

Murray River Bridge is an example of what can be accomplished in a short period of time (three months).

The Australian National South Line holds a certain type of attraction. The trains are not impressive but the motive power is, and so is Murray River Bridge. The current railway bridge of the river Murray was built in 1926 by the South Australian Railways to replace the then current road rail bridge.

The new bridge was capable of handling Mr Webb’s giant new steam locomotives! The bridge shows its American design traits well.

Initiation of the project

In 2017 we received an invitation to the Caulfield Model Railway Exhibition. I discussed with Alan (the exhibition organizer) possible new layouts, and he liked the possibility of a new exhibition layout.

However, needing inspiration of what to build next, I discovered the plans I had drawn up for Murray River Bridge a long time ago.

Investigation found that Murray River Bridge could be built very close to scale and would fit in the then current train room. It would require me to build a generic fiddle yard, one I could use again and again, not just for Murray River Bridge (MRB) but for any other layout, maybe a future Barcoola MKIII.

The Design

Several process improvements were incorporated into Murray River Bridge’s base board design, such as:

• A template was built to ensure that the position of the T nuts at the ends of the boards were the same for all the boards, enabling the holes in the blanking plates to align every time. • Light pole positions were incorporated into the boards at a regular interval, giving a more even light spread. • 6mm Medium• One size fits all, all bolts used on the layout are 3/8 size. • 6mm MDF was used as the track base on the fiddle yard boards, this made the boards significantly heavier. • Spray foam glue was used to glue the 30mm Formula R foam together. However, this turned out to be a bad idea, as the foam expanded more than the instructions stated. This only affected the fiddle yard boards, but I won’t be using this glue again. • All the boards are 2’6” wide and will easily mate to all the other boards for transport