Building the Arnhem Bridge Perimeter - Part Four - The Bridge Ramp and Underpass

Part One
Part Two 

Part Three

I paused printing the perimeter buildings this week as it occurred to me that in order to build the grass embankment I really needed the bridge underpass to hand so I could fit the embankment to it and ensure heights and dimensions all match as needed.

I have therefore spent the last week refining the underpass model, designing and scaling the underpass supports and printing them all out. 

The underpass was split into three parts as it was otherwise to large for my printer. In total it measures 280mm long, and is 145mm wide matching my chosen width for the entire bridge (and slightly narrower than scale). The road tunnel is 105mm wide with a height off 40mm.

As far as I can determine there are at least four sets of pillars between the underpass and the bridge towers. Four works well in game providing plenty of support and strength to the model while still looking open and uncluttered. This entire element measures 850mm long. The brick pillar (on the right), towers and steps are from the WOWBuildings Kickstarter, everything else I have designed myself. At this stage everything is just dry fitted. The pillars and underpass all have a one degree slope built into them with the road surface being 75mm at the towers, 60mm at the northern edge of the underpass

I am using 5mm sheet (insulating) foam for the road, and have topped this with wallpaper backing paper for strength and to provide a better surface for painting and finishing. The foam sheets are 800mm square, so my plan is to divide the entire road length, which stretches the full 6 foot of the table (1830mm) into three. A full 800m length for each of the bridge and embankment, with a shorter length joining these two elements on the underpass. 

The southern table edge is some 170mm from the towers, so I need to take this into account and ensure this unsupported element is strong enough for gaming and clumsy gamers, myself included. The iconic arch starts some 365mm from the towers and so sticks out too far for my gaming space, but I will try and create a way to include it, if only for a couple of photos.

Going forward this week the printer will continue churning out perimeter buildings, with the list getting smaller by the day, while I will start cutting 5mm foam to create the grass embankment.

Buildings left to print in red