It wasn't designed to do that!

In my trademark way I have been distracted with another project on the 009 narrow gauge layout! The two narrowboats - I was put right on the RM Web that these vessels are narrowboats and not barges as barges have to be at least 7 foot wide - have got a little bit closer to being finished, but only a little bit!

What has now distracted me is whilst looking through the multitude of unmarked, disorganised and chaotic storage boxes of things 'That will come in handy one day' in my man cave, AKA The Room of Gloom for some plastic card for some parts on the barges - Ooops! I did it again! - I mean narrow boats, I found the Wills Double Track Occupation Bridge kit. This set my mind going - always a worrying thing especially for Mrs Woody! I had used the same manufacturer's single track bridge to take the road over the railway on the original and first board of the layout as described here. Could I use this double bridge to take the road over the river on the second board? It certainly wasn't designed for that purpose! However that is one of the great things about model making - you take something that was designed for one purpose and then repurpose it. There was only one way to tell if this kit could do the job with modifications and that was to get the parts out of the packaging and start measuring and construction. So here I go again. Distracted with this project! However it has actually progressed and looks as though it may well work - again unusual with anything I do! This is what I started with and the packaging shows how the kit designers envisaged the finish product to look. They didn't take me into account though!

The width of the bridge as governed by the steel girders and railings provided in the kit fitted well with my cut out river base in the base-board. Good start! The retaining walls however were too tall. In my use of the kit on the original baseboard the retaining walls were too low so I had to make my own higher ones. This time all I had to do was cut down the kit walls to the right height. Firstly though the main retaining walls were constructed as there are four parts to each one. Left over night to fully harden, this evening saw some carful measurements taken and then the retaining walls cut with a small Xacto saw to the measured height and you know what? They actually fitted! 

As you can see I cut down the wing walls and joined them at right angles to the main retaining wall to give a more normal construction for a river bridge. More work to be done on this and who knows when that may be done if there are any other distractions that come about!