Showing category "Bridge" (Show all posts)

Bridge Sides

Posted by Rupert Connor on Sunday, October 18, 2015, In : Bridge 


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Bridge Deck Completed

Posted by Rupert Connor on Wednesday, September 30, 2015, In : Bridge 


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Deck Ironwork

Posted by Rupert Connor on Sunday, September 20, 2015, In : Bridge 
We still haven't really got the hang of regular progress reports. A month or so of dodging the weather and measuring, marking, cutting, drilling, cleaning, painting and welding means the ironwork for the bridge deck is now in place.



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A complete abutment

Posted by Rupert Connor on Friday, August 7, 2015, In : Bridge 
A few days ago we completed one abutment at last. Final stage was to fix in place the plate to which the main beams will be attached. Decided it would be a good idea to drill and tap some small holes in the plate and use bolts in these holes to allow precise adjustment and get it perfectly level. The bolts were removed and holes filled after the grout it rests on had set, leaving a perfectly flat steel plate to fix the main beams to. The plastic bags in the background of the second pict...
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Jigging the jig

Posted by Rupert Connor on Saturday, June 13, 2015, In : Bridge 
A few days of bright sunshine earlier this week meant we could make a jig to hold the holding down bolts in position and add the last half ton or so concrete into the abutments. The polystyrene cones around the bolts (to be removed once the concrete has set) allow for final adjustments to the positions of the bolts to make sure they fit into the base plates that the main beams will be fitted to. The voids left by the cones will be filled with construction grout to hold the bolts firmly...
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Gearing up for work

Posted by Rupert Connor on Monday, June 8, 2015, In : Bridge 
We've just come inside after baling out the water that had collected in the top sections of the bridge abutments not yet filled with concrete. We were being bitten by midges so it must be warming up. Hopefully we can now move on from how we left things at the end of last year (as shown in the picture below) and get the holding down bolts that will hold the bridge deck onto the abutments concreted into place.



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Bridge Design

Posted by Rupert Connor on Tuesday, May 19, 2015, In : Bridge 

Here are a couple of screenshots of our bridge design taken from our Solidworks drawing. To give a sense of scale, the main beams (shown in grey) are about 10 feet (3metres) long and 6 inches (150 millimetres) deep. We're waiting for the weather to get warmer and drier before concreting the holding down bolts into the abutments. We're still hearing the phrase 'risk of frost' on the weather forecast in this part of the world.


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A Lucky Coin

Posted by Rupert Connor on Sunday, November 2, 2014, In : Bridge 


As the bridge abutments near completion, we decided there would be no harm in a little superstition to help ensure their success. A little research showed that bridge builders often placed a coin near the top of abutments for good luck, so we're placing a 2014 coin in each abutment.

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Bridge Foundations

Posted by Rupert Connor on Sunday, June 15, 2014, In : Bridge 

It seems (and is) a long time since work first started on the bridge site. At last some progress has been made by digging the foundations for the bridge abutments, filling with well compacted hardcore and getting the shuttering in place for casting the bases. We hope to cast the concrete soon and then we will feel that at least we are out of the ground.
At the risk of sounding more like a weather report than a railway building blog, we experienced some interesting weather whilst doing this wor...
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Bridge design

Posted by Rupert Connor on Friday, June 28, 2013, In : Bridge 
The basic oval (phase 1 on the Track Plan page) is now more or less complete except for construction of the bridge. As usual a surprising amount of time has been used moving piles of stones and stripping/relaying turfs. At least today's rain is welcome as it should give the newly laid turfs a good watering.

The idea for the bridge is to keep it structurally simple, but add some decorative ironwork to make the design appear more complex. Structurally we intend using two 'universal' steel beams ...
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