Bradford Exhange trestle

[Terry Toenges]

You said 65' to 75' between the bents. I would think it would have to be longer than that because of the length of the loco, tender, and car in the pic. Car is 9" and loco and tender are 11" with standard tender. If it is a shorter tender as it looks, maybe take an inch off? That's still 19". If you centered them on the trestle, they would overhang the last bent on each side.
From the other thread:
"In HO:
65 scale feet X 12 = 780" / 87 = 8.9655" long
75 scale feet X 12 = 900" / 87 = 10.345" long"

[Len]

To me the pic looks off. The loco and cars look like there were drawn too big for the trestle. Too bad they didn't do the pic with actual equipment on it. That would have made it a lot easier to figure out.

Len

[Terry Toenges]

I kind of thought that, too.  The tender looks odd like it's too short (length wise) and too tall.

[Len]

Found these Great Northern trestle plans from 1931 that show bents being placed 14' apart, which is pretty close to the 15 HO scale feet I figured. So if that's typical bent spacing, and the thing actually is HO, I'd say it is a scale 65 - 75' long and the loco and rolling stock drawings are out of scale to the trestle.



Len

[Terry Toenges]

14' would give a distance of 15.44" from bent to bent.
14' X 12 = 168 / 87 = 1.93" X 8 spaces between bents = 15.44"
When I zoom the pic to 170% and measure with a tape, there is about 1 1/8" between the nearest bents. If I go to the next farthest bents, it 1". That means it would probably increase at least 1/8" if there was another bent closer. That would be 1 1/4".
There are about 2" from the last bent to end of track (Still at 170% zoom to figure this proportionately to determine how much track outside of the bents in relation to the distance between the bents). That leaves 3/4". If you figure the next bent would be 1 1/2", then the distance left would be half the distance between bents. All total, that would figure out to 1 + 1/2 bent widths.
With bent widths at 1.93", that gives 1.93 +.965 = 2.895" on each end or 5.79 total outside of the bents.
That would come to 21.23" total length for the trestle.
I sure wonder how long it is now to see if we're "on the right track".
I don't know if I'd actually buy it without knowing for sure how long it is.

[Len]

The ad says it's for HO or On30, so the tunnel portal has to be wide enough to handle that size equipment. Woodland Scenics HO portal openings are 2.75" wide. But the portal on the trestle doesn't look that big. It may be closer to Chooch HO portals that have a 2.5" wide opening. But the angle the pic was taken at makes it hard to use the portal opening as a guide to the overall length.

Personally, I find it hard to believe they would think anyone with an HO or On30 layout would buy the thing without knowing how long it is. I can't think of anyone else that sells a bridge or trestle without specifying the overall length.

Len

[Trainman203]

Looks too top heavy, like an O scale train on an HO trestle.  Or a bear wearing a tutu riding a bicycle in the circus .  😂😂😂

Both HO and On30 ride the same real- world width track .  That track fits on the trestle but the trestle "scale" is only correct for HO "scale" trains.

[Len]

The kicker for me is in the ad, right above the price, it says, "From Hawthorne Village". And almost all of the Hawthorne Village trains I'm aware of are On30, intended for 'Christmas Village' use. If the trestle is actually HO scale, and the loco and rolling stock drawn in are On30, that might explain why they look so oversized.

Maybe someone with an extra $129.99 laying around will buy one and let us know what the dimensions are.

Len