Entry posted by Will Vale
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I laid the fine-ish track last week and did some minimal wiring, and have run some trains successfully. The code 40-code 60 joints were reasonably trouble free, the most I had to do was tweak the end of a rail with pliers to smooth a bend. I'll try and take some pictures of those since there are some details I wouldn't mind getting an opinion on.
I've been quietly wondering whether I'd get my modelling (as opposed to construction) mojo back, and it appears to have happened last night. Almost before I noticed I'd measured and drawn out the west portal of the Unterer Hirschsprung Tunnel, and building followed. It looks rough as a badger's bottom in the above picture, but I think with some primer and possibly a thin coat of gesso to mortar the stonework it'll turn out OK.
Pleasingly, I found a dimensioned drawing of the tunnel after I'd worked it out from the photo' and I was right to within 1mm! Sadly, I can't re-use the pattern for the two outer portals on the layout because they're on the start of the return curves and it'll need the width eased by 1-2mm. I tried it with this one and the Doppelstockwagens just graze the sides, so hopefully it'll look pretty close.
Construction was fairly simple - a sheet of 1mm styrene for the retaining wall, marked out and cut as a circle with tangets rather than the proper curve. The liner is 0.5mm styrene formed around a wooden spoon handle with boiling water, and the arch stones are 1.5mm slices of Evergreen 3mm x 0.75mm strip. I was going to use Tamiya putty for the carved rough stone, but couldn't find it, so I roughed up the surface and applied a very thin (about 0.5mm) layer of DAS clay over PVA, reasoning that the worst that'd happen would be that it'd all fall off!
Luckily it didn't, so I had a go at carving the stonework with the blade of a small screwdriver. Quite pleasant work, although looking at it there are too many long lines in the pattern - it's difficult making random patterns as opposed to semi-regular ones. My approach was to break the space into larger polygonal areas and then subdivide them, but I think the polygonal edges have ended up being a bit too visible in the result.
After brushing the dust off I painted a coat of dilute PVA over the clay to stabilise the surface. So far it's holding together, and it doesn't seem to want to chip away despite carving through to the styrene in a couple of places. I'm looking forward to painting it now!
Here's a long shot of where the tunnel's going to end up. There'll be a huge slab of rock just behind the mouth which (I think) makes the slopes make more sense.
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