The bridge

I spent a bit of time looking at trestle bridges on the internet to get a generic feel for what they look like, in particular the decking section, while I'm not 100% happy with the results, I feel I've tried pretty hard to make it look far better than a plastic kit example, the trestles themselves are made from scale timber, weathered to a greyish colour, the base is made up from a 19mm wide strip of 3mm MDF with 3mm strip hardwood veneered to the sides with a further strip of 1.5mm timber, weathered and stained and glued to give the stepped appearance of the prototype.

Starting the module

When I decided to attempt an exhibition style module, For some reason, Maffra sprang to mind, the yard is quite large for a regional area, At one stage the railway serviced Nestles, a dairy co-op, a large sugar beet factory and cattle.

My building skills are not that good, so before tackling the large yard area, I decided to build the trestle bridge section on the up side of Maffra and incorporating a section of the MacAlister river.

With the assistance of Chris Pearce and his well equipped shed, we started work on a 1100mm x 600mm module, the standout feature of this area is the long bridge spanning the river and the floodplain beyond, In the real section, Concrete was used for the piers, I decided to use wooden trestles as they were prevalent along the line, and still exist less than a kilometer from the site modeled, (and I like the look of them).

Maffra, The real thing

Maffra was a major station located in the town of Maffra, on the now closed Maffra railway line railway line in Victoria, Australia. It was 212 km from Southern Cross station. The line was opened in 1887 and in 1889, a branchline was constructed from Maffra to Briagolong. Rail passenger services between Traralgon and Maffra ceased in 1977 and regular freight trains ended in 1983, when through services from Orbost and Bairnsdale were routed via the parallel Traralgon-Sale-Stratford railway.
The rail line between Traralgon and Maffra was closed in stages from 1987, with Maffra station continued to be served by freight trains from Stratford intermittently until 1993. A number of special passenger trains visited Maffra on occasions, including a steam hauled service from Melbourne hauled by locomotive K153 in August 1990. The station remained staffed by a station master until the final closure and the rail tracks were removed over the next two years.