NOCH makes a range of hard foam bridges, tunnel portals, and the like. The ones I've looked at are really nice!:

https://www.noch.com/en/product-categories/model-railway-bridges-viaducts/model-railway-hardfoam-bridges.html

Foam Stone Wall: https://archive.kitmaker.net/review/11081

Amazing products they have there!

As I said earlier the details for the underside of the bridge are at the builder's discretion. I am however, one of those goofs that often put details in places where they possibly will never be seen so of course I am having to do the underside of the deck truss.

I will say this, I used to have my doubts about the need for these lessor struts on real bridges but this truss is now approximately 10 to 20 times more stiff with these small struts added than it ever was before!

The change in ridigity borders on amazing!

Well I have reached the point where I have to make a decision regarding bridge color. Anyone out there have any thoughts (or actual references) as to what paint colors might have been used to protect metal bridges in Central Europe in the 1930's and 40's?

Right now without having any actual references, I am leaning towards German gray with plenty of rust and dust highlights. I want something at least slightly lighter than solid black to show off more of the details of the bridge.

I can't recall where I came across the information but I recall many steel bridges in Germany were a gray-green. Much greener than Feldgrau, more like a sage. Whether that was due to weathering, I do not know.

Cool - Thank you - I was sort of wanting to go with some sort of green but had no reference to base that on.

Certainly seems a lot of modern day German bridges are painted that color! The sage green must be some sort of national favorite.

So far I am currently using a buff colored, slightly textured paint for the abutments. Am also in the process of carving even more wood grain into the bridge ties, painting them a very dirty dark brown and then giving them a final shading wash using an even darker black color. (Nuln Oil (Black) Shader - from Citadel)

Sage green is exactly how I would describe the Glienicke Bridge when I attended the very last "personnel" swap in 1986. (Scharanskii did not wish it to be called a spy swap as he was not a spy) And of course it was around in WWII.
But the best example is actual color footage of the Ludendorrff Bridge painted in - sage green.
My photos of other DDR bridges are less helpful being B&W, but I remember many that color, or simply rusting away.

Many thanks for sharing your very interesting experience - I did previously look at the color movie footage of the Ludendorrff Bridge but it has aged so much over the years that I could not be sure if the color was light green or a pale blue??????

Interesting how a thread brings back such vivid memories.
Here's one of Gliekicke Bridge I took from the water with an instamatic in 1984: (George Orwell, you were right, at least in East Berlin)



And on the day of Scharanskii's release, I actually have a whole slew I took with my other camera, a Minolta 7000 Maxxum, which was loaded with color film:





They show the color pretty well. I don't imagine the Genossen spent great deals of money repainting it.

And of course the money shot, which I've posted before. My B&W camera was a plain jain Minolta SLR, but I liked it for B&W because I could use up to three doublers on a 210mm lens, for some pretty damned good close ups of "things." Very fast grainy film required though.

WOW!

In that middle photo the top curved surface of that beam on that inverted arch probably shows the bridge color best of all. At it's most true shade as it is in the most direct sunlight.



I enhanced the color intensity very, very slightly here based on what I thought the reds in that crossing gate were really like on that day.

Robert - how does that compare with you memory of it?

Robert - sorry to interrupt with regular "business" but today's work efforts were focused on getting the railroad ties for the bridge looking correct. I have been using a fairly new product line of paints and shaders from a figure company by the name of Citadel.

I will most definitely continue to use these shaders in the future!


On the left the Trumpeter RR ties, base coated in some form of home concocted Brown and Raw Umber color (cannot remember just what this mix was made of.) On the right the addition of the Citadel "Nuln Oil" shader coating on top of the Brown.

- way, Way, WAY BETTER! (If I do say so myself!)

Looking at my old photos always reminds me of the Sally Oldfield song, "Strange Day in Berlin."

As for your ties, my memory of them is far better than my memory of the bridge color. Sage Green is as apt as I can put it. Because they still burned brown coal in the DDR, I distinctly remember the ties AND the ballast being a dark reddish brown. I have color photos somewhere. I used to collect a lot of the old buildings and bridges in hopes of one day doing a DDR layout with my Piko equipment, (bought in East Berlin by teh way) but I'll probably have to wait until I retire for that. Too many irons as they say...

In my case am already retired.

All my irons ARE plastic these days!

(Unless of course they are prewar cast metal - as in Chicago Flyer and American Flyer early O gauge locomotives.)

No brass?

Brass? It's my AF prewar stuff I am showing off these days but brass, yes!

All HO.

3 Shays, (20 ton 2-truck, Pacific Coast 3-truck & 80 ton 3-truck) a Southern Pacific light USRA 2-8-2, a SP 4-6-2 with skyline casing and a sort of freelanced heavy 4-8-2 of questionable road origin.

Bridge length expansion complete; other construction continues:

Ties are all painted and stained and now the real track laying begins.

Bridge to eventually be a weathered and slightly rusted sage green color.

I know I am getting ahead of myself cause I still got a lot of work to do on this one - can't help myself!

Just showing this as food for thought!

Not saying the model railroad bridges shown up till now look anything like the German "K-Gerät" bridge shown in this photo. However what is shown is a military engineer'/pioneer bridge. It appears to be a modular box truss 4 section portable bridge that pins together roughly every 16 feet**. The trusses are then topped with wood decking.

In my mind the small model railroad bridges (N Scale in this case) we have been talking about COULD be made to look similar to what you see here. (Not an exact copy but very similar in style.)



This may be the next bridge in my modeling future.

** Using the known diameter of the wheels on the artillery piece as a measure, the individual bridge trusses shown above work out to be approximately 15.6 feet in length.

Again referring to the period WWII photo above: if one were to attempt to model this Pioneer bridge the trusses are obviously much more lightly constructed than what we have been talking about up till now.

Fortunately there is a classic plastic model that has been available to railroaders since the 1960's that may provide the lighter truss we need. Luckly the exact same structure is now available in three different sizes - N, HO and S/O scales. This model was first introduced by the company known as "Plasticville" it is the two track signal bridge.

As with everything else in this thread these 3 different scale/size bridges offer a lot of variety that is VERY usable in many different scales.


The fully assembled bridge truss now available in three sizes.


Here are the moldings available within the Signal Bridge kit.

Again just food for thought: (See above)



A little Evergreen to thicken the lower cord and voila!

Edit Note: At this point I thought I would end up using this signal bridge as my starting point but instead ended up using the N scale Warren deck truss bridge as my basic unit for the K-Gerät pioneer bridge.

The pictured German bridge in your post is a "Brückengerät K n. A" (a.k.a. "K-Gerät") bridge. Here are a few more views :











From David Doyle's Panzer II book :



You'll find all the datas you'd need about it here (and more period pics to boot ) but it's in German.

H.P.

Why did I not just say to myself "ask Frenchy"?

Thank you sir.

Of course answers create more questions:

I still have specific questions regarding the construction of each individual span module. I don't think the German publication gives us specific information on the individual truss units, these dimensions so far can only be deduced from overall general measurements for various bridge assemblies.



It appears each individual 15.6 foot truss is actually two identical metal trusses put together in the factory as a complete unit with a laminated "nailing beam" permanently attached across the top of the assembly. I am not sure if there is also a smaller nailing beam on the bottom of the truss.

In cross section three of these "factory assemblies" create the support for the roadway planks that are nailed or simply laid crossways on top of the three truss assemblies.