I just received my Marklin Arched bridge with the approaches. Any suggestions of a good weathering proceedure would be appreciated.I model the 1 through 3 era. In this era did Germany use wooden bridges as was done in the US? Seems like stone was the primary material.
TIA Lloyd

Steel is the material of choice. Failing that stone or brick is/was used.

Having had a look through my old railway magazines dating back to the 1930's, which contain very many historical pictures, I have found no evidence of wooden bridges on anything but narrow gauge or local (short) lines within Europe. For short spans it was steel, or cast iron at least, and for longer spans it was stone blocks. Even the iron bridges were supported on stone pillars.

Wooden bridges are a very American thing, probably due to them building railways through so much forest and resultant easy availability of lumber. In Europe, with it's higher population density, most of the forests were already gone by the time the railway was invented! Also, the US used it's railways predminantly for slow freight services, whereas Europe was into fast passenger trains. I doubt a wooden bridge would be up to a large Pacific with 10 coaches charging over it a full pelt.

Chris

Chris Busby
UK Marklin Digital layout builder