Royal Gorge Suspention Bridge

[Maddox61]

I will be adding pics here from this point on of the progress on the Royal Gorge route.



Here are some of my first pics of terrain work done in Canon City.
The terrain here is raw off MicroDem and has not yet been touched.

Here is the results after doing a little tweeking and smoothing the terrain out a little bit.

This is an area just south of Canon City just before the gorge.
These are the before pics.

This is after a couple hours of leveling the terrain.
This area alone is about 4-5 boards.

..

 

[Maddox61]

Leveling the layout

Here is a pic of just the top corner of the area in the prior pics. If you look close, you can see the blue track at the top of the picture.
This is the same track as in the above pic. This one hill is 150m high, or by the pain in my rist, 15 layers to level out. And even using a double track, it still takes for ever.

I must have layed a real mile of track in this one corner alone! :hehe:

Here is the mini map pic of that area.

The Red area is the area in the image above.
The Yellow area is the area I have finished leveling out and is ready for modeling.

 

[Maddox61]

The Royal Gorge Suspention Bridge.

Ok. I have had enough of the terrain for a while. So I decided to have a go at modeling the bridge.


The bridge was buildt to exact scale.
The dementions are as fallows;

Over all length = 384m
The main span between towers = 285m
Deck width = 5.48m

Length of the suports for deck = 5.85m
Length of the suports for the fence = 6.44m


The towers are different hights.

Tower 1 (North Tower) = 46m
Tower 2 (South Tower) = 34m

The tower legs are 30cm angle iron
The tower braces are 10cm angle iron
The fence is 1.65m from the lower edge of the dack.

There is 346 steel cables holding the deck up
and 120 cables below the deck for stability to prevent swaying.
with a total of 480 braces holding the fence in place.


NOTE: I assumed that the bridge tower bracing is made of 4" angle iron. So this is what I used.
It has been many years since I have seen it.



So, here are a few pics of the Royal Gorge Suspention Bridge.


Getting started with the first tower.

 

[Maddox61]

Here is a little close up of tower 1.

 

[Maddox61]

Here, I am making sure the towers are exactly 19ft apart. This is 18ft for the road bed and 6" on each side for the boards used to hold the decking in place.

.

 

[Maddox61]

Hanging the first cable.

 

[Maddox61]

A close up of the bracing for the fence.
If you note here, the angle iron on the tower is flat as I was trying to lower the poly count.

 

[Maddox61]

Here the upper cable is in place.

 

[Maddox61]

Getting the curve and angle on the lower cable took a bit.

 

[Maddox61]

Almost time to start hanging cables.

 

[Maddox61]

Royal Gorge Suspention Bradge

About finished with the mesh.

 

[Maddox61]

Mesh is done.

Welcome to the (Metal) jungle!

Here are a few pics after playing with baking the shadows.

No, I did not add bolts and there is no arch in the bridge. the poly count is getting way too high.
Also, I did create another model using flat iron braces (rectangles) rather than angle iron. This uses 4 less poly per section.

Still need to create the texture and get it ready to load into Trainz.

...

 

[Maddox61]

I will post more on this later.

I am going to get back on the terrain for a bit and will return to texture the bridge in a later.

Those of you that have been to the gorge, please feel free to let me know if I have left anything out.
Those of you that have not been to the gorge, please feel free to put it on your things to do list. You will not be disappointed.

I hope you have enjoyed the pics.

By the way, I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas!:wave:

 

[505657j]

nice job so far on the bridge

 

[jakelw]

Best bridge I've seen!

 

[scratchy]

Thats just awesome! For those that dont know here is a pic of the bridge
http://www.city-data.com/forum/atta...-any-pics-royal-gorge-bridge-20050930-118.jpg

 

[jakelw]

Thats just awesome! For those that dont know here is a pic of the bridge

Now that's a bit of a drop down.

 

[mattm]

Bendorsey, move over!

Nice progress on the bridge so far, and I look forward to seeing your progress with the route.

Matt.

 

[Maddox61]

Thats just awesome! For those that dont know here is a pic of the bridge
http://www.city-data.com/forum/atta...-any-pics-royal-gorge-bridge-20050930-118.jpg

Nice pic. That was one of my refference photos.

Thanks

 

[Maddox61]

Now that's a bit of a drop down.

And your only seeing about 300ft of the drop in that pic.
The actual hight is 291m or 956ft. to the tracks below.

Love this place. Anyone that has not gone to see this, need to if they get the chance.
There is nothing like the feeling you get when you are standing on the brindge and a car passes by. The boards will bow up under your feet. A lot of fun.

Thanks for the comments everyone. Keeps me motivated.:wave: