Metal Bridge Building

May 2, 2019

While back ago, I tried to make a metal bridge. Could not for the life of me figure out how the pieces went together. Ended up just using wood bridge pieces.

Put together this for my own use, and it might help someone out trying to build metal bridges. All these are using the Road bridge sections, but the Rail bridge sections work the same. Made sure I named all the blocks to reflect what you see in Mission Editor.

Open to objective observations. I very well might have something wrong here. Hell, I've had to edit it a dozen times already.

Will start at the center of the bridges. There are 4 bridge sections that have a high support columns. All 4 of these can be attached to each other if necessary. In some instances it looks fine, in some instances it may not look so well.

There are only 4 sections that can attach to these "Center" spans. The "rgt" and "lft" is confusing. It really should have been north/south. When you place a bridge section, orientaion is 0. If you want to attach another bridge section to the one you just place to the north side, you have to use a "rgt" section. So just remeber rgt is north, lft is south. Gets confusing when you start changing the orientation of the center spans.

If the bridge is at the point where it has to attach to a ramp, the section that should be used are the rd_start_up_rgt/lft. As far as I can tell, the ONLY place you can use the rd_start_up_rgt/lft is when you are attaching the bridge to a ramp, or a rd_ramphi section. Same goes for the rd_start_dn_rgt/lft

Can't say I ever figured out exactly what the "up" and "dn" meant.

If you try to put a north section to the south side, it will just not line up correctly

This is what you end up when correct sections are attached.

From here on, it is important to pay attention to both the height of the support column on the section to be placed, and if it does, or does not have support columns at both ends of the section.

If it does not have support columns at both ends, it is a sections designed to be attached to the ramp or ramp section of the bridge.

If you are not using any of the 4 center spans in pic one, the spans to use are the br_rd_dngrid. The sections that attach to br_rd_dngrid when they come to an end would be rd start dn lft/rgt.

br_rd_dngrid are also sections you can optionally use once you have come off a center span with br_rd_updn_rgt/lft.

Some sections of the low bridge put together.

Now we have to get the bridge down to the ground. I can only see 2 usable objects to do this. They are rd_ramp_up and rd_ramp_dn. I can not figure out what rd_rampmed_up/dn are for. The sections that attach to the ramps, (if you need them, they do not have to be used) are the rd_ramphi_up and rd_ramphi_dn. I can see no reason not to attach the ramphi_dn section to the ramp_up section, but just in case, i have been keeping the up parts together when building bridges. These 2 pieces slide together, so this is one place where you can adjust the span of your bridge to fit wherever you are placing it.