A few weeks ago I decided to visit an “old friend” called the Hunterline Co. from Canada. These folks offer a full line of wood bridge kits in a number of scales and also sell bulk construction wood for those scratch building projects.
Once on the web site, I remembered their company logo includes a picture of a wonderful Howe truss bridge. The last time I ordered kits from these folks, they were working on developing a kit of the Howe Truss Bridge, but at that time, the kit wasn’t yet ready for market. Could I be so lucky this visit to their web site to find the completed kit available for sale?
Sure enough, there it was! I promptly ordered an N scale kit and proceeded to watch the mail daily hoping this project would be as good as promised.
Before I knew it, my Howe tuss bridge kit was on my workbench ready to be built.
I was not disappointed in the least. Hunterline really went out of their way to create a wonderful recreation of a North American icon of the late 1800s.
This bridge is available in N, HO, S, and O scales and comes with very detailed directions, and also full-scale drawings. The wood is clearly marked as to size, and they even give you a drill bit that’s the correct size for the wire supports. Now that is paying attention to details!
The construction of this bridge is easy, fast, and fun. Not including drying time, the entire project took me about 5 hours. If I were asked to rate the difficulty of this project, I’d say it ranked at an advanced level.
My Hunterline Howe truss bridge came out so well that just for fun I built a photo module around it. I’ve been looking for an excuse to practice my water effect skills, so things worked out great.
If you like wood kits, you really should take a look at the product line offered by Hunterline. You will be glad you did. Every kit I’ve received from them has had the highest quality possible, with just enough challenge to make them interesting.
Hunterline Company
1072 Riverbank Dr.
Cambridge, ON
Canada N3H 4R6
(519) 653-4174
www.hunterline.com
Price: $55.00 (For N scale kit)
Era: 1840’s to the 1880’s
