finally finishing the "Squid Bridge"

Many years ago, say twenty, I was in a hurry to get the mainline running and enough scenery to host bus tours for the NMRA convention in Seattle coming up in 2004. There was a spot on the mainline between Seattle and Everett just perfect for a low bridge, but I didn't have time to fuss with it, so I just carried the plywood subroadbed and homasote roadbed right across where the bridge would eventually go, and called it good. This is what it looked like during the surrounding scenery construction:

the carved pieces of pink foam did a decent job of simulating the look of concrete piers, and it wasn't long before I painted them a concrete color. I painted the "bridge" black just to hide it as much as possible. After the scenery was "finished", I got the idea to have a giant squid chasing two parents in a rowboat while their kids watched in horror from the shore. People loved it, so we started calling it the "squid bridge". When Paul Scoles was here taking pictures for the RMC article (January 2008 issue) he wanted a large locomotive coming around a dramatic curve, so this is the photo that ended up being published in the article:

He made me take the squid away, but I couldn't believe that he tolerated that completely unfinished bridge in the scene!

Nevertheless, the layout had many other higher priorities over the next ten plus years. At some point I bought some MicroEngineering deck girders to make the bridge out of, and spray-painted them an aluminum paint color. I thought this would get the ball rolling. But it didn't. Those girders junked up the scene for many years, and eventually I got so disgusted that I used them as gondola loads during ops sessions. You can see them ruining the scene here. It also looks like the squid lost its focus on the couple in the rowboat. Not to mention my messing around with dual gage track up in the air above.

Fast forward to 2018. Dave Enger started helping me on the layout, and he suggested that we could just cut out the piece of plywood supporting the bridge, paint the homasote to look like a concrete casting around a ballasted girder bridge, cut the plywood in three angled sections, glue the girders to it, and be done. So we did. Here are some progress photos and final shots to show that this morning, after 20 years, I finally put the guardrails in place over the finished bridge, and get to make a fun redo of Paul's magazine photo.

Abutments and piers:

the giant squid returns:

and, finally, guardrails!

Now, here's a new version of Paul's photo, (without all the photoshop improvements he made to the background etc.). I can see what he meant about the squid being a bit of a distraction. Good call.