Highway Overpass

One of the problems I knew I would have to deal with building a long skinny shelf layout was how to handle the termination of the layout. The mainline at Silver Springs just ends, and I wanted this to be disguised.

After a lot of tooing and froing I had decided to disguise it with a highway overpass, specifically the one sold by Rix. However this kit set has a couple of limitations.

1.The price and since I would need 2 to make a double lane highway and a 3rd to increase the length, I was looking at well in excess of US$100 for a few pieces of styrene.
2.It is straight and I really needed my overpass to curve across the section of track that one day will extend to a staging yard.

So with these limitations in my mind I decided that I would attempt my first scratch built structure.

While I don't have an exhaustive list of supplies, I can tell you that basically my overpass consists of about 90% Evergreen styrene of various types with the remaining being the highway railings from Rix which they supply separately. The street lights came from somewhere in China and cost me the ridiculously low price of $4 and were freight free to boot. A quick and dirty calculation tells me that all up I spend about US$50, so a significant savings to create something that I think looks better than the packaged one.

All up the project took about 4 weeks to complete and I am very happy with how it turned out! If you want any further details feel free to post a comment.

I have to say this; if scratch building is something that scares you (like it did me) find something simple to build and have a go. Yes you will make mistakes, but the feeling of satisfaction when you have finished is far greater than building something from a kit.

If you notice closely the picture gives a bit of a clue as to the geographic location of my layout location. It's not for any particular reason that I chose this area other than I once (briefly) lived not far from it. I am not, repeat not, trying to replicate this part of the world.

The next part of this project is to add the hills around the fake tunnel portal so it all blends together nicely...oh, and add some vehicles!