Canardière Road Overpass WIP

Carnadière Road, looking West.

I'm actually working with Louis-Marie on modelling the most accurate rendition we can of Canardière Road overpass. Crazy stuff, I know... But the craziest thing is Louis' madman skills with a table saw. Someday, he will sculpt a Venus of Milo out a MDF plank!

Canardière Road overpass is an iconic railway spot in Quebec City. For this reason, particular attention is spent on tedious details to make it as true as possible to the real thing. On the old picture, you can see at left Lairet-Station, a station build for the students of a nearby college in the late 20s. At right, you can see an old bottling plant, farm implement warehouse and linoleum dealer building. It burned down in a spectacular fire in the late 60s... and was rail-served!

First was finding the correct geometry of the bridge since it's located on a curve and the real one is on a straight line. It was quite tricky because many curved turnouts overlap there... If we mess up this step, we could have serious problem when laying tracks in the yard.

 

Basically, the overpass is MDF covered with styrene sheet to recreate intricate Art Deco details. The original structure was built in 1931, during the recession. My first version, built about 3 years ago, was done with Rix Products highway overpass. It was OK, but clearly out of proportion.

And here's the new one:

We even made some grooves under the deck to simulate concrete girders. May sound silly to most of us, but I think this kind of little details help to be proud of your own work.

The overpass and scenery were "mockuped" last week. The result is quite convincing. However, fitting the backdrop, worst, finding or taking a suitable picture may be impossible.

Next step is to make the retaining walls. It should be far easier than the bridge itself.