I bought a Senior Powerline set on eBay to try out Type III models. With a copy of the missing manual, I tackled the lift bridge. I immediately had 2 problems. The manual said ‘make the deck . . . one No. 15 (5×9 plate) at each end and three in the center’. The rest of the span was to be filled in with four ME 3×9 plates. The span was 39 holes long. The called for plates only amounted to 37 holes. Also the parts lists (supplied by Bruce Hansen) showed that no Power Line set had more than 4 No. 15’s. To get around this, I used a pair of No. 18 5×21 hole base plates from another set overlapped to make a 21×9 plate, 3 No. 15’s and one ME. This gave the required 39 hole length.
After tinkering with the distance between the towers to prevent binding and getting the strings adjusted properly, it worked very well. This was my first experience with the chain drive. Setting that up turned out to be easier than I had expected.
- Video of Dave Ware's Type II Lift Bridge (11/10/2012)