Bridges installed! Well temporarily at least...

Moving right along.....
Thanks to the long weekends and short work weeks due to this holiday season, I pushed myself to get the scene this far along.  Not sure how much more I'll get done to this area?  Planning to have an ops session the middle of Feb so I don't want it to be torn up for that.

After getting a location laid out for the Truss bridge I started removing the remaining ceiling tile and foam for the river area.  I had to re-align the drill track slightly to line up with the bridge.  

One thing I didn't put much thought into was the differences in the length of the two bridges and the close proximity to each other.  This kind of messed with the shape of the river as I had envisioned it to be a fairly evenly wide body of water running through the scene.  I gave thought of adding a 40' deck bridge to the Truss bridge but since I already had the guardrails installed and bent I didn't want to mess that up.  

This would have given a more even width of the river, but a little head scratching told me to keep the river not much wider than the Truss bridge and when it passes under the Deck bridge to keep it under the middle and right 80' span.  The area under the leftmost span will be more of a raised sandy area, but still mostly covered in trees.  So I think it should still work just fine?

I do believe the river to be a slow running, muddy river that is tree lined on both sides right down to the river banks, so there shouldn't much work involved making the banks?

A short while later I heard the distant rumble of something heading south.  Within a few minutes GP7 #4434 was leading the SB LRMP-W over the Deck bridge.  

While I was getting the shot setup, I noticed another GP in the background,  the El Dorado Switcher (an ex-drgw GP7) was dragging what must be a very long cut of cars onto the Truss bridge while working the yard in El Dorado!  After grabbing the first shot, I ran like hell from one end of the overpass (yet to be installed) to the other in order to get these two shots!

Here's a couple of other shots for fun.

With the bridges (temporarily) installed, I can now focus my attention on the next town north, Fordyce!

My overall plan at the moment is to get all the track work redone before starting any major scenery.  As of now I still have 4 major areas left to work on: Fordyce, Haskell (two jobs in Haskell), a small section in Winnfield and then the big one, I need to install a raised section in El Dorado on which to build the town of El Dorado proper which will be elevated about 3" above the yard. 

At the rate I'm moving now I'm hoping to have most of this done by late spring or early summer...