# Scratch-made H.O. truss bridge by a woodworker



## mfurjanic (Dec 4, 2010)

I made this wooden H.O. scale bridge on a snowy day. I am a woodworker with good woodworking tools and skills. I know nothing about model bridge making, except for a bit of reading on the internet and studying some pictures. I used some woodworking techniques and ideas, and thought this may be interesting to other woodworkers/train modelers.

First, I made an actual-size drawing.









I taped the drawing to a pine board, and covered the drawing with wax paper. The pine is soft and accepts push pins easily, and the wax paper keeps the wood from being glued to the paper. 
I had some stained holly lumber (which normally I use holly for white wood inlays). Holly is a relatively soft hardwood and is very tight-grained and stable. It is a bit expensive to be using for construction, but this holly had some staining and therefore unusable for inlay (not white enough). First I cut and milled the holly into 1/8 X 1/8" and 1/8" X 3/16" miniature planks. I cut these sticks to match the lengths on the drawing, then started gluing the pieces together - right on the drawing - using push pins to keep everything in place while the glue dries.










I rough sawed the sticks on a band saw, then sanded them to the final length and proper angles on stationary disk sander.










Glued an outside brace to the truss using simple spring-clamps.










I glued some short track-bed sticks to a couple long 1/8 X 1/8 sticks. (The larger stick you see there is not part of the bridge, but simply a straight-edge to keep the roadbed aligned. I did not use any measurements or jig for the spacing of the road-bed, but just eye-balled it.










I then glued the two trusses to the roadbed using a couple 2X4s as a jig to keep one truss at a 90 degree angle to the road-bed. Made sure the whole thing was square, and held it together with some various clamps until the glue cured.










I don't know if the scale is correct. I just measured my loco and made sure it would fit the bridge with some room to spare! Anyway, it turned out to be 2-3/4" wide, 3" tall and and just over a foot long.
Next: the hard part for me - painting and weathering it. Guess I need to do some research on this.



















Any constructive criticism for improvements or ideas appreciated.
Matt Furjanic
www.inlaybanding.com


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## tjcruiser (Jan 10, 2010)

Hi Matt,

Very nice work ... thanks for sharing.

We have a member here on the forum named David Stockwell who has done incredible things with wood trestle bridges. (He offers them for sale.) Here's a link to a gallery of his work for great inspiration. You might want to ping him for tips / ideas.

http://www.modeltrainforum.com/album.php?albumid=73

Regards,

TJ


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