# Walnut Howe Truss



## hi-railer (Jun 15, 2010)

I have spent several years (off and on) planning and researching for an overhead railroad in G. I had always planned on it being in my basement. There would be many construction challenges and some limitations on the bridges. My wife actually came up with the idea of building it in our bedroom. I would have a clean rectangle and vaulted ceiling. I should probably start off by saying bridges are my favorite part of a RR layout. This layout will be a collection of bridges. Each corner section will have a matching pair of pony truss bridges. One end will probably be a Bollman Truss, and the other will be this Howe Truss. 

The fact that I am woodworker and also fell and saw some of my own lumber made the Howe a natural choice. I researched every Howe truss I could find including a covered bridge only 30 minutes from where I live. I wanted to build it so it would be struturally the same as a prototypical bridge. I also wanted the various sizes of lumber and hardware to be within reason for 1/29. I will give more details as I go but in short, the tension rods compress the cross braces against the angle blocks holding everything together. 

Counting only actual construction time I have close to 175 hours in this. There are 1425 pieces. I will give more details as I have time. I would like to post the pics, not sure what the specifics are here but it looks like I don't have that blessing yet.


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## Matt Z (Dec 2, 2009)

Hello, 

The only way to post pics here without being a non-first class member are to add them through html coding. 

I use photobucket and once I select the image, it gives me the proper code to post photos. You may think about doing that, or another option, becoming a first class member. 

Cheers, 

Matt


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