Subject:
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Re: Ponte Vecchio - Elevated Road Bridge Over Rail
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.town, lugnet.trains
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Date:
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Wed, 15 Dec 1999 19:47:21 GMT
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Viewed:
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905 times
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Great ideas Erik! Only you've got the wrong Italian city for the Ponte Vecchio.
It is actually in Florence. The Ponte Vecchio bridge is very interesting because
on top of the bridge are 2 galleries, the lower gallery consists of shops and
stores, and the upper gallery is known the Vasari Corridor that connects the Uffizi
Gallery (Palace)on one side of the bridge with the Pitti Palace on the other side.
Today this upper corridor is used as a picture gallery (on a bridge!). The bridge
was built in 1345, and is the first segmented arch bridge built in the West. It
was also the only bridge over the River Arno that was not destroyed by the
retreating Germans in World War II.
A history and architecture buff,
Gary Istok
Erik Olson wrote:
> "Ponte Vecchio"
>
> The idea of building a model of my home village of Kew Gardens (New York) has
> been growing on me for quite some time. It is a diverse lot of residential
> styles including Anglophile medieval half-timbered houses, bits of castles,
> Jazz
> Age art deco, stucco, and the barn-shaped Dutch Revival house. It ranges from
> single dwellings to apartment towers. Furthermore it contains a railroad
> station, post office, two fire companies, and a major hospital, so it would be
> a
> very full and challenging Lego Town inspiration.
>
> Now I am buying my apartment so I have been learning more about the history and
> architecture. Around the 1910 train station are some very interesting bits of
> the village, where a bridge was constructed over the new railroad to keep the
> east and west village halves in contact. Over time three other road bridges
> were
> put up nearby, but the best construction was a 1930 pair of "Ponte Vecchio"
> contrivances which elevated shops, restaurants, and houses out and over the
> rails, making the railroad disappear and seamlessly uniting the village.
>
> In real life, the amazing thing is that the buildings are actually steel cages
> suspended from a bridge at roof-level! This is so that, with a peak of 100
> trains passing daily, the structure is able to withstand the vibration. It
> follows the same principle used in medieval Venice to hang shops out over
> waterways without depending on pilings that could be destroyed by flood,
> therefore the trick is named after the original "Ponte Vecchio".
>
> I had been calculating the dimensions of a model of this street and have
> settled
> on a 32x32 straight road plate for the road bridge over the track, with 16x32
> bases for shops also elevated to the road level. The 9x32 margins of the (old-
> style!) roadplate would be sidewalk, or might be eliminated by overlapping the
> plates.
>
> On either end, a gentle slope would be required, so other 32x32 roadplates
> might
> lean-to on the bridge top. In real life, buildings march along the downward
> sloping sidewalk. This makes for some odd-shaped thresholds on their doors! At
> one end of the ramp is a pizza restaurant with very steep steps inside between
> the bar and the dining room. Behind this restaurant is a train boarding
> platform
> which would call for the standard 2-brick high pre-fab loading platform. At the
> other end of the bridge, the shops also march down the slope--but there is an
> opening where cement steps (now buckling) lead sharply down to a mid-level
> trackside cafe and this path continues to bleed off altitude with interruptions
> of a step or two at a time. A series of back doors to shops or apartments
> follows the sidewalk level down to the ground where finally there is a broad,
> flat railroad station and parking lot.
>
> Did I mention the riot of peaks and gables that roof it all? It would call for
> a
> barrage of inside and outside corners, a perfect job for the new black roof
> packs. (Although in real life the wood shingles are dark brown.)
>
> Fortunately this mess of mixed elevations is mostly rectangular in its layout.
> Other interesting bits of the village close by give challenging non-rectangular
> problems: "flatiron" buildings on wedge-shaped parcels of land between
> intersecting roads. But one thing at a time!
>
> Back on construction: If I install a road plate that is tilted upward at one
> end, then I could construct buildings upon 1x2 brick hinges (or other hinge
> types) angled to establish a level. I am not sure the math would work out
> neatly. The seam could be hidden by a raised sidewalk snapped to the slanting
> surface of the roadplate.
>
> Alternately, without using any plate underneath--after all the real life "Ponte
> Vecchio" is a suspension bridge--I could construct the buildings to hang from a
> rafter beam and secure the sloping road surface to their lower edge with
> Technic
> pegs. Or not secure it, and have the road plates rest on a framework of Technic
> beams. Maybe the real world solution is the best one for the model, too!
>
> The new sloped roads in 2000 City Centre got me thinking on this. I don't
> believe those pre-fab ramps are perfect (no control over the grade!) but I am
> not ruling them out.
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Message has 2 Replies:
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 | | Ponte Vecchio - Elevated Road Bridge Over Rail
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| "Ponte Vecchio" The idea of building a model of my home village of Kew Gardens (New York) has been growing on me for quite some time. It is a diverse lot of residential styles including Anglophile medieval half-timbered houses, bits of castles, Jazz (...) (25 years ago, 12-Nov-99, to lugnet.town, lugnet.trains)
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