Aerial Lift Bridge

Latest construction: Main Span

An idea came about with Scott Tomlinson, Mike Ferguson and myself talking about running our models. We agreed the most enjoyable thing about these boats is maneuvering them. So we though having harbors to maneuver into would be real challenging. 

I won't get into how these harbors will be built just yet, at least until I get some images for you. I will say they will have working bridges to add to the realism. One such bridge will be loosely based off the Aerial Lift Bridge at the Duluth Harbor entrance.

Now the real bridge has a span of 300 ft, about 150 high and the entrance is some 1600 ft long. Scaled down to 1/87 scale this comes out to be just to big. We decided to narrow the bridge from 41 inches to 30, more challenging for the smaller models. Height will still be the same, and the entrance will be cut down to 12 feet instead of 18.5. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress. There will be a lot to follow on this abbacies project soon.   laker301@comcast.net