This highway bridge does not follow any particular prototype and is not highly detailed. It was intended to be a very simple and basic project for Philippe, my 4-year old son and happened to be something that was needed for his model railway.

I am lucky to have access to a wood shop with a nice bandsaw but these materials can be prepared with any number of tools.

Trusses were built up from strips made from scrap pine, ripped to 1/8" (square) or slightly less and laid out on a very simple plan for gluing. Stringers and sleepers were also ripped from scraps of pine to 1/8" or slightly less x 1/4" or a tad less.

Decking was made from birch stir sticks, ripped to about 1/16" wide and the 'curb' was 1/16" x 1/16". This is the only material that was purchased. I bought a box of 1,000 at a local coffee shop for $5 Cdn ($3 US) and we used about 2 dozen of them for this project. The piling for the foundation is leftovers (about an inch long) of 1/8" dowel sharpened in a pencil sharpener and pushed into the foam to about the right elevation.

The embankment and the road surface in this case was built up with real crushed rock but could be made with any number of materials that model railroaders always have at hand.

The bridge construction is started with the piles in place and the supporting beams set.   Now we know the elevation of the final structure and can begin the embankment construction.

I saw the elephants in the lake, but is that a dinosaur in the trees?