Thornycroft Building #15 - Worting Road Bridge

In the photo below the bridge is bottom left of the site. (Click for a larger view).

J.I. Thornycroft and Co Motor Works, Basingstoke, 1939 - Britain from Above

Time Line  

Built 1899/1900 along with the railway from Basingstoke to Alton that opened for public services in 1901. Just to the north of the bridge is the siding off the single track line into the factory site. When the railway closed and track lifted in 1936 this stretch from the main line at Basingstoke to about 400 feet this side of the bridge was retained for the movement of factory goods. In the late 1960s part of a ring road was constructed on the railway route and the bridge replaced with a bigger concrete type spanning the new four lane dual carriageway.

Construction

Brown old English bond brick with the stronger blue engineers brick in vulnerable areas. Four buttresses, two each side were probably flared towards the base. Grassed embankments each side of the bridge.

The Model

Here is the bridge on our full sized layout plan in a similar orientation to the above.

There is a photo of the prototype here, whilst it can be use to scale the model the decor is less clear. Other colour photos of the bridge at Winslade on the line and drawings in the book "The Basingstoke & Alton light Railway" helped to provide details.

The model is made from brick paper on card and lightly weathered with black soft pastel scrapes applied with a dry paint bush. The height of the arch has been made higher to accommodate our tallest wagon load, which is our Thornycroft J class lorry.

The buttresses have not been flared due to complexity and mostly hidden by the embankments.

The model will be built into the landscape of the layout (the roadway shown is temporary). The roadway will be created with the landscape so that its texture and colour will be uniform as it crosses the bridge.

The next photo shows how the bridge fits into the landscape.

David