15 - Building a Wills / Peco Viaduct at Donnington Castle Model Railway (SS80/SS81) 

Looking really good. Brick arch liners! I don’t know anyone who hasn’t had an issue with fitting them. I made a jig from from chipboard and timber strips to the same width as the arch span. Another piece of batten to go over the brick sheet, held down with long screws to keep the arch compressed. The viaduct section was then offered up to the end of the brick sheet, another piece of wood across the back with two strong rubber bands, one each side, looped round the screws holding everything in place, then glued with DCC Concepts MEK. Preforming the arch liners by curving them round a coffee mug, securing with rubber bands and leaving them in my (at this time of year) rather warm conservatory for a day or two helped getting them into the shape. One thing to be aware of if you’re going to build a multi span viaduct is that the top of the stone arch is half a millimetre wider than the bottom. In my case, seven arches had a considerable curvature which I found before assembling. After removing any moulding flash, try aligning the top edges along a spirit level and see the gap at the base where the piers attach. Rather than use the provided track bed, I used Plastruct 2mm sheet, 91106, cut to depth, spanning the joins between arches. It makes for a much stronger construction. The only downside is having to custom fit the inner walls of the parapet as the supplied track bed is only 1.5mm thick. If you did want to use the supplied track bed, offsetting it’s position to go half and half over each arch with a half section at the ends to fill in would achieve a good increase in overall strength. I have to say, my construction method differs somewhat from the supplied instruction sheet. The result is a much stronger finished article with extra bracing for rigidity.

Looking good mate!

Good job

What a remarkably realistic outcome! The completed result really is an excellent representation of an historic stone landmark, very well done with your artistic skills.👏👍

Nice work. It will be good to see that section of the layout once you've got it fully built. Tim

Looks really good, when I was building my viaduct one of the brick sheets shattered like yours, I bought some extra sheets and they were much more flexible and fitted in much easier and I had 9 to do.

Nice little project, the paint work came up really nice, shame about the brittle plastic! Out of interest would the plasticard brick sheeting be a good substitute to replace the damaged sections. Keep up the good work.