This photo shows the overall last photo of the area I called "Allegheny River". A scratchbuilt bascule bridge was placed here. The major counter-weight of the bridge was never built before the layout was dismantled. I have an article describing the construction of the bridge.

Design

The Allegheny River area was pretty straight-forward. The double mainline crossed over the river via the Fairmont bascule bridge. On the one side was the town of Shire Oaks, and on the other side was an area called Lyon Hills. The river provided access to the Williamsport harbor.

This section of the layout's double mainline was removed and rebuilt, starting over again from just the l-girders. This photo shows the new vertical joists in place.

The Allegheny River is a 38" x 22" sheet of plywood.

Here I was in the process of gluing the corner piece of plywood between the Allegheny River and the Williamsport harbor. The clamped blocks of wood (and there are two more) were glued to the framing. Afterwards, an extra screw was drilled in from behind the frame for added support. The corner piece of plywood was screwed to these blocks.

Here is a view from the closet over the river toward Williamsport.

Next, I installed a Masonite board over the river and harbor. After the plywood subsurface was ready, I spread contact cement on the plywood and the Masonite board. After 45 minutes of drying, I laid 1/8" diameter dowel rods (26 of them) evenly spaced over the plywood. The plywood-covered area is not sticky, so you can place and remove the rods easily. I then carefully placed the Masonite board on top of the dowels. The Masonite board had two cut-outs at the Fairmont bridge supports, so the board was guaranteed to line up perfectly. Starting in the closet end, I removed the dowel rods one by one as I used a J-roller to press the Masonite board to the plywood.

The edges of the Masonite board and the plywood were sanded smooth for future work. This next photo is a nice comparison shot with the photo above. It is now very clear as to where the water surface is going to be.

I built and installed the abutments for bridge over the river. They were made out of 0.40" thick styrene. They needed to be strong enough to hold the weight of the bridge and its load. The styrene was glued using Testors plastic cement and the abutments were glued to the Masonite and plywood using Walthers Goo (rubber cement).

Here's my CAD drawing of the critical dimensions of the abutments. I mostly just wanted to keep the info for my records.

I temporarily placed the bridge on the bridge abutments. First I needed to still paint and weather the new abutments, and later install track on the bridge. None of this can be done until the river has been painted and has water in it.

I glued a 1/4" strip of square wood along the edge of the river, which will form a support for the scenery.

Next, I applied some Sculptamold along the river bed up against the wood strips.

I added two sets of three poles along each of the abutments to protect the abutments from stray ships as they pass under the bridge. These were made out of 1/4" dowels. I smoothed the ridges off of the dowels using the Dremel tool. Next, I cut them to size, approximately 3/4" tall. I then mixed some black and light brown acrylic artists paint and brushed it on the poles. The poles were then rolled on some paper towels to rub some of the paint off the poles. This gives them a bit of a weathered look. Finally the dowels were glued onto the Masonite board with yellow carpenter's glue.

With all the preliminary work done, it was now time to paint the river bottom. I used a matte black indoor paint. Without first priming the Masonite board, it took two coats to get a nice, even look. Some brush marks were still visible, though.

Next, it was time to create some water. I used a foam brush to apply Liquitex Gloss Medium. The next day the brush strokes were clearly visible, I so I decided to apply another layer using swirling motions. This produced N-scale ocean waves, so I redid a port of it and the rest of the water using the stippling method (where you drop a stiff-bristled round brush on the material as you apply it). At first when you pull the brush back up it leaves sharp peaks of gloss medium material, but as it dries it softens and makes for gentle waves. I also mixed some light blue paint in with the gloss medium. The next day I looked at the river and was shocked to find that the gloss medium had dried much like it appears when you first put it on - a non-transparent white muck. My best guess is that either the paint or the stirring-in of the paint, or both caused a chemical behavioral change that made the gloss medium do this. What to do? I was going to go through the arduous task of sanding the surface down to the Masonite again and start over. I came up with the idea of simply repainting the entire surface again and re-apply the layers of gloss medium. This is what I did. The shapes of the waves left over from the previous layer simply added to the effect of the river. I repainted the surface with black paint, repainted the river edge areas, and put three layers of gloss medium on the surface. This time I did not mix any paint with the gloss medium. It turned out great.

And the river with the bridge in place.

This photo shows the code 40 bridge guard rail being installed. I used Micro Engineering bridge track. It differs from normal flextrack in that the ties are closer together. They supply you with two pieces of guard rail that you need to attach to the ties. After cutting the track to size I glued the guard rail to the ties using 5-minute epoxy. This worked great, however what I learned after I did the first track was to tightly mount the flextrack to a long straight edge, because as you are working on the guard rail you tend to bend the flextrack. The second track is almost perfectly straight. Once the glue dried the flextrack is no longer flexible!

After the glue dried I spray-painted the track with my standard brown and black paint to give it that rusted, weathered look. The guard rail was bent slightly inward and again glued down with 5-minute epoxy to the existing mainline track. I left a small gap between the rails to avoid electrical shorts just in case the back of locomotive wheels touch both sides of the guard rails.

The track of the bridge was soldered to the mainline rails on the right of the bridge, so that no wires were needed to feed them. I never glued the track down to the bridge, so that it could be removed. I did scratchbuild and install a wooden boardwalk between the rails. The bridge was glued down to the abutments using Walthers Goo, which makes it removable (although the layout is long-gone, I still have the bridge).

This is the last photo I took of the river area shortly before the layout was dismantled.