For most of the route through the Lehigh Valley Gorge, the Lehigh Valley Railroad and the New Jersey Central RR ran on opposite sides of the Lehigh River. However, just south of White Haven, they came together as the LV came over the White Haven Bridge and the LV ran right over the CNJ. I always thought it was possible that the CNJ tracks were present in 1976, but (at least in the vicinity of White Haven) I now have evidence (a photo at the bottom of this entry) that they'd been removed sometime between 1965 and 1967 due to a track sharing agreement reached between the CNJ and the LVRR. As you can see in the picture below, the tracks are no longer there today - in fact it's a rail trail that you can bike or hike all the way into Northhampton, PA. The supporting structure for the runover is still there (see photo below or the aerial Google maps shot in the White Haven blog).
Essentially, this is a deck girder bridge (lots of girders as a matter of fact) that support the upper set of tracks (probably still a two-track main in 1976). You won't find this in kit form, and I think it's simple enough to scratchbuild it out of other materials. In order to model it, I'll be using a variety of Plastruct girders (for the deck), some styrofoam (for the left-side concrete wall, foam board, and some flexible stone wall (peel and stick) material mounted on the foam board I got from our local model railroading store to mimic the stone walls you see in the picture. The picture below shows the space I have available for this feature on my layout.
I got a bit impatient while waiting for foam adhesive to cure in the town of White Haven and thought I'd attack this because it needs to be in place when I start laying plaster cloth and Sculptamold there. I started by measuring how much foam board I'd need for the stone walls and cutting that to size (keeping in mind to leave enough room for the girders).
I then adhered the stone wall to the foam board and adhered the back of the foam board to the plywood supporting the track.
The single piece of stone wall I had was enough for the long wall, but I still need to get some for the short wall on the left - time to visit Forest Hill Station! (he had this wall section for $11.25). (And guess what? I picked up the last one he had this morning). There's also the question of color - the walls in the prototype are a grimy reddish brown - these are much too tan. A paint treatment should fix that. I'll also need to eventually blend in the local rock where the wall ends, but no rush on that.
While I wait for peel and stick wall material, I focused on the concrete wall end on the left side. I piece of 1" pink foam did the trick. Measured the approximate size and used the picture to cut something out and paint it. Here you can see it with a base coat of dark gray.
And here it is temporarily positioned on the layout with a piece of foam board on that side.
I then painted the rock wall and concrete wall end to replicate the photos I had (focusing on a dark brown base for the rock walls and secured those items to the layout with adhesive and finishing nails.
I can now scratchbuild the girder deck, paint it and get it placed on the layout.
I first cut the plastic I-beams that run over each wall. They are of different lengths, even on the prototype, and the girders are laid out roughly perpendicular to the track running over the overpass.
I then cut the end I-beams that would join the two longer beams (eyeing up the approximate lengths and cutting the flanges off of the beams and joining them with some quick bond glue.
Next I cut girders to run from one side to the other and some smaller beams were run to tie the structure together and others were added to support the track ties. The final assembly was then be painted (emphasis on rust) and slid into place and should support the rail nicely. Here's some shots of the progression (first shows the main girders in place, second shows the girder ties added, and the third is everything painted a flat black):
Nothing related to railroading through the gorge in 1976 was pretty or well maintained. Thus, the black need a good coat of Poly Scale Rust and some touchups to simulate birds roosting, etc. Here's photos of the finished product (aside from integration into the surroundings that won't happen for a while):
This little project is pretty encouraging and a nice, quick way to add a bit of scenery that replicates the prototype fairly well. After looking at these pictures, I actually could have used this underpass and laid track to run into the gorge and down to the lower storage level on my layout. Too late now!
Finally, a shot in 1967 of a LV freight being pushed northward over the same overpass by some vintage RS-11's and a B unit sometime in the winter. Note that the CNJ mainline no longer has tracks!
It's almost 3 years later and I've finally made it around to scenicing around this feature. I had to add scenery on the far side of the underpass so I decided to add ballast to mimic the gravel that was left after pulling up the CNJ tracks:
I'll add some more shots once I get the scenery built up around this underpass.