So was this:
So was this:
The Golden Gate Bridge gets short shifted, because of a simple limitation of photography. You rarely see a picture of the bridge from the side, straight on. There’s few good places to stand to take such a picture, and no lenses with wide enough viewing angles to encompass the entire bridge, except from extremely long range.
My son has a model train layout and inquired about modeling the Golden Gate Bridge. The simple calculations indicate just how little vertical structure supports that enormously long span.
In HO, the ratio of model to reality is 1:87. A one foot long model would be 87 feet long in reality.
The real world Golden Gate Bridge uses four vertical towers, approximately 750 feet tall, to support three spans of road deck, which is a total of almost 9,000 feet long.
These numbers are incomprehensible to the average person.
On my son’s model train track, a scale model of the bridge would use towers only 8.6 feet tall, roughly the heigth of your kitchen ceiling, to support a model bridge span that is 103 feet long, roughly twice as long as your whole house.
It is an incredible feat of engineering, one that few people truly appreciate.
My son now understands that he will not be modeling the Golden Gate Bridge in HO scale, at least, not in my house.