Salt and Pepper

As I mentioned last night was RR club so no progress on the sim. I belong to the Worcester Model Railroaders. Last year we moved from out quarters in a damp basement of a wire mill in Worcester to a spacious above ground (i.e. dry!) portion of a new building in Dudley MA that houses the Stevens Linen Co. We are well along on our new layout which is a free-lanced Boston and Albany line between Boston and Springfield MA. Information on our layout may be viewed here:

http://www.wmrr.org/

I am responsible for the electrical system which uses Digitrax DCC. Last night I ended up trying to fire up our new computer which will be used to run JMRI Decoder Pro for programming locomotives among other things and was stymied by a missing mouse driver of all things. Typical computer session you think it will be routine and Just Work but ...

Well back to MSTS (where you know to expect the worst). I think I am far enough along on Park St. to put that aside to come back later to detail it. Tonight I think I'll fire up GIMP and try to do some parts for the Longfellow Bridge. Known as the "Salt and Pepper" bridge due to the unique towers at the center section that look like giant salt and pepper shakers, this is a landmark item and therefor a must have for the sim.

What I am thinking is to keep poly count down, to do the arches as a texture, hopefully one for the center section which is longer, then another for the 10 side sections. According to rough measurements I did from Google maps it looks like each section is slightly different in length but to maintain sanity I think I will do each one the same size and an even multiple of meters so that the track joints and bridge sections align, which helps with dealing with the fact that track and bridge slope up to the center then down. I figure if I use 50m sections for each with 55m for the center section the overall length is 1820 feet whereas actual is 1768 feet, hopefully close enough.

Deck width is 105 feet with 27 for the median where the track goes, and 39 for each roadway plus sidewalk. Unfortunately the roadway and sidewalk sizes are different for each side of the bridge, that may be tough to deal with using standard road sections so I may have to compromise there and make them the same. Upstream is 6' sidewalk + 33' road, downstream 10' sidewalk, 29' road. I'll have to see what sizes are available in Newroads - I haven' t done any roads yet as per the dire warning to leave that until all track is done, other than some dumb roads to help locate things and visualize what it will look like.