Great Bridge of 1886

The earliest of the exhibition buildings that I know about is this large bridge.  The drawing shown below is found in the 1886 catalog of loose stones -- the earliest Richter catalog that I own.  The very large arches and the large arc segments are rare stones.  Thanks to a fortunate buy last year, I now have enough of these stones to build a version of this bridge.  The arches are 5 units across, but I only have enough stones to make a 3 unit wide version.  (It goes without saying that the two center arch version requires far more of these rare stones than I have available.)  Second, the ramp of the bridge is a slope of 1:2, or 26°.  I have only a few of these stones (#s 225 and 254 series) in yellow.  So I preserved the 1:2 slope and created a stairway, instead of a ramp.  For those of you who are interested, I have built, using blue stones, an exact reproduction of the ramp and rail.  I only had enough stones to build one of the rails.  Let me say that this construction, without glue, is possible, but painfully tedious.  (The original versions, both the one and two center arch versions, were glued.)  The 1:2 slope is almost the limit of the static friction holding power of Anchor stones.

I worked from this picture in the 1886 Loose Stone Catalog of the Richter Company.  Although one cannot see the interior stones, there are few unknowns when constructing the bridge.  One can see clearly that the bridge is 5 units thick -- establishing the bridge width.

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Here is my reproduction of this bridge.  You can see the inset of ½ stone in the center of the bridge.  With ½ on each side the road surface is increased to 4 units, still less than the 5 in the original design.

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A close-up look of the central stone arch.  The stones forming the inner arc remained in place with less sagging than I had though was likely.  I could have adjusted the spacing between the pillars to eliminate even this little amount, but I set them by measurement.

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I used steps because I do not have enough 1:2 sloped stones in yellow.  And, even if I had had enough of them, I would not have had enough of the small yellow stones to make the railings.  A 1:2 slope is really too steep for a ramp, tough a little too shallow for comfortable steps.

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A closer look at the railing and the interior of the arches.  Note the increased width of the supporting pillars.  The wider pillars make the reduction of thickness of the center less obvious.  As mentioned above, I have built a single railing in the original style in blue, to prove it can be done without glue.  

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A few of you may wonder what I look like.  Here is a picture from Christmas, 1996.  This picture is about as good as they get.

For those who are really interested in Anchor stones, I have written a book about them.  (I just got tired of either looking up the same information again and again, or trusting my memory on specific details such as dates and names.)  It is expensive, $70 (or 100 DM) ppd, because I print it myself on my PC and color ink is expensive.  The book undoubtedly contains far more information about Anchor stones and sets, the Richter company, etc. than you'll ever want to read.  This book is a lot of work to print (I print about a dozen at a time, and is available in either English or German), so please don't think I am urging you to buy one.

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