This post brings together the work done this year on the viaduct on the model railway. So while I’m publishing this now, the photos and work covers a longer stretch across this year and was completed about a month or two ago.
The work on the viaduct has actually been going on for a couple of years now. Back in 2017 I wrote a post looking at the construction of the structural elements which support the tracks. That was followed by the start of the decorative work, however that reached a critical point where I needed the track work on the bridge to be complete before I could progress the decorative work.
Due to the design of the railway one of the compromises I had to make was that the junctions to allow trains to move between the inner and outer loops ended up in the same location as the viaduct. While this is not proto-typical of a railway it was necessary if I wanted to be able to get trains from either loop to the bay platform in one station or just into the other one. So this mean mounting point motors which will be hidden within the viaduct, and in turn that meant waiting for all the control wiring to be completed.
This has meant that while I build the inserts for the arches a couple of years ago, they’ve been hanging around the railway waiting to be put in place. Now that all the point motor wiring is complete and the control panel in place (see post from October) then I’ve been able to finish them off and fit into place along with the remaining bridge elements.
The decorative side of the viaduct is based on the Scalescenes Viaduct kit, however rather than using that on it’s own, I’ve used a wooden structure for the track which is then hidden inside a modified version of the kit.
The next stage is to add some scenic elements in terms of sloped land, grass, bushes, possibly a road and a canal or stream in the bottom. I’m hoping this will not take me another 3 years that it’s taken from the previous update!
Here are some photos taken showing some of the different stages of construction up to what it looks like now:
Finished track across the viaduct 
Creating the arches from the components 
Viaduct arches taking shape 
Rough fitting of all the arches into place 
Starting to think about landscaping around the viaduct 
Starting to glue the arches into place. 
Gluing the arches and front detailing in place 
First completed section
Finished bridge construction, now awaiting scenery elements to be added
