I agree that the bridge has already shown potential. I witnessed it being used more than once, and in less than 15 seconds, it was up, someone entered or exited, shut again, for a train to cross. Bill is right. If you shut the bridge lightly, and then tap each side lightly, it lines up easily. Still, it is nice to let those running trains that you will be opening it. We really do not need any surprise accidents. Awareness is our biggest chance of preventing them. Opening the bridge does NOT stop the trains from running. This may change in the future but as for now be aware.
Thanks, Have fun running trains.
-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Lohman <844bill@gmail.com>
To: ttat-members@aoot.com
Sent: Sat, Nov 20, 2010 10:29 am
Subject: Lift Bridge Module - THANKS
This is to thank Scott and Adrian (and anyone else who helped) for our new Lift Bridge Module!
I think it's been a great convenience during shows and setup and teardown -- and we no longer have to look at grown men and women crawling around on their hands and knees!
Opening and closing it while we're operating trains has turned out to work very well. No problems.
Rick, David and others have done a nice job fine tuning the track alignments on the module. After these were made we had no problems repeatedly opening and closing the bridge and running lots of trains across the module.
For what it's worth, I found that the trick to preserving this alignment is to CAREFULLY lower the bridge back in place and then DOUBLE CHECK the track joints alignments by running my fingers over the joints and then making minor push/pull adjustments if neccessary.
Bill