New Bridges on the Manitoba & Minnesota Sub.

New bridge at the west end of the Fort Frances yard.

Ever since I started dreaming about, designing and then building the CP Rail Manitoba & Minnesota Sub., I wanted to have a bridge or two spanning the yard in the town of Fort Frances.

In the very early days, before any scenery was applied, I put long pieces of balsa on wood "abutments" to simulate bridges--just to see what it looked like.

Bridge at the east end.

The idea behind the bridges was that they would help break the town scene into discrete sections, a way of breaking up the long expanse of town and yard.

Over the last number of years, I accumulated Rix bridge kits, with the idea that I would, one day, get around to building those bridges.

Well, almost 20 years have gone by, and I never got around to building those kits.

But then my friend Arnold Walker began to take down his amazing Northland Route layout. In October, I was able to get his fantastic Pioneer grain elevator for the M & M Sub. This month, I was able to get two of his bridges.

(I told him that, piece-by-piece, the Northland Route is moving north to my layout from his.)

The bridges needed to be cut to fit my space; a hacksaw took care of that easily enough.

After using a bit of glue to fix them in place, and then I finally had those bridges I've wanted for so long.