For an outdoor OO railway, how does one make the tunnel mouth look realistc, ie, not the toy-like appearance of off-the-shelf plastic or the bodged appearance of cast concrete?
Can one obtain real stone cut into small rectangles to produce one's own facia?
I have built dry stone walls by breaking up slate and gluing it together, so I don't see why you could not use that technique, but I am not sure you could buy the stone ready cut. Cutting slate is not very hard, though - buy a cheap hardpoint saw and don't expect it to be any use for wood afterwards. You'd have the problem of the joints, which will tend to vanish if the blocks are too regular. I guess you could use a thin layer of clay to create a small gap, I tried something similar for building cliff faces. I started with a piece of ply, applied a layer of clay and then pressed the stone into the clay, wiggling it to give a thin layer of clay between adjacent stones. When complete I washed in some dust. The result was not bad, but I don't have a picture yet. Guy
00 scale individual bricks or stones? That sounds a bit of a torture.
How about obtaining some moulds from the Linka system*,they produce very fine stone or brick mouldings . obviously they were designed for casting plaster but water resistant plasters are available and there are some good varnish like coatings around now days. I have some moulds and will be experimenting later in the spring. Cement not concrete can be quite fine made with a fine silver sand mix. What area is your tunnel set in? If is representing a stone built tunnel just get suitable thin bit of stone from a garden center or grave stone supplier and drill a large hole with a large Hole saw and then cut in half . Won't have any stone courses but in 00 you will hardly see them any way in a garden setting .few months of lichens growing it will look more in place than a modelled one. After all the vegetation around is from the land of the giants in 00.
G.Harman
I do have no experience with this, for one thing my scale (Z) doesn't allow. Looking at the problem I would try cutting myself, any real stone you like, using the diamond-cutter from Dremel or the like. Lately I cut small pieces of slate to make a windowsill in real life. 6 mm slabs can be cut easily. Bigger pieces can be cut using of the shelf diamond cutters on an angular cutter. Diamond cutters are definitely more expensive, but last much longer. Ermin de Winkel
Your aim is to fool the eye, so take a leaf from the trompe l'oeuil painters. Take lots of photos of a real tunnel, and model it in weather resistant plastic. Prime with a good quality grey automotive primer, and then paint it. Or ask an artist friend to paint it for you. Depending on the paint used, you may wish to spray it with automotive clear-coat (which blocks UV), and then overspray with a matte varnish.
HTH wolf k.
For my indoor HO layout I bought a plaster "stone" tunnel mouth by Woodland Scenics. I brush painted each individual stone using about 6 different, but closely related, colors and then oversprayed with a weathering spray and immediately wiped it off. I then added a plume of sooty black above the mouth to represent decades of smoke.
Looked pretty realistic to me. For outdoor use I'd suggest some sort of sealant over the whole thing.
I have one of they but I don't think (John may have facts on this) that plaster will be durable outside; it's pretty close to impossible to exclude all moisture from such a hygroscopic material and once water is in there the first frost will start the process of destruction. Guy
Agree with Wolf here. Real rock rarely has the texture or grain size for modelling, although coal can be useful after painting. Plastic is better and if you get a preformed one and paint it accordingly, add fine weathering powders (or talc, fine sand etc) plus some fine grass or mossy looking stuff, it can look very realistic.
Cheers, Simon
Could be, but dewaxed shellac is a pretty potent moisture vapor barrier, although not as good on liquid (i.e. standing) water. I don't know if Zinsser SealCoat is available on your side of the pond.
Second idea (a crossover from another hobby) is fine aquarium gravel (the round version, not the jagged) embedded in epoxy.
It's long been a theory of mine that model surfaces, in any gauge up to 6", are too detailed. You can barely percieve the mortar courses in brickwork (e.g) at a prototype half mile viewing distance, so attempting to imboss/emboss the texture seems foolish. A good smooth surface and accruate colour rendering seems the best place to start, and then using colour rather than scribed lines to suggest the joints.
Consider HO cobbles seen at exhibition distance. A good mottled colour wash would be just as good.
Now, if you want to take digital photos from a scale 5'4" above the track, then it's a different matter...
I'd pay a lot of attention to the angles the face and abbutments make. They need to be truly vertical. Anything else looks like non- scale earthquake damage.
Wouldnt go as far as not scribing and just relying on colour as scribing then paint in scribed lines gives excellent mortar. However it is true that the impression is far more important than the actual detail. Disagree that angles should be verticle however as that depends entirely on the direction of compression on the rock followed by any subsequent tilt. They need to be consistent however so look at real faces in the type of rock you wish to model.
Cheers, Simon
bobharvey wrote: [...]
Abutments and retaining walls have a batter, they are not truly vertical. The cross section of the wall is trapezoidal. This does two things: it puts more mass at the foot of the wall, thus making it harder to move; and some of the fill's weight behind the wall will be transfered to bear down vertically, thus again reducing the tendency of the wall to move.
The batter angle varies with the type of soil. If there is enough room, there will be no retaining wall, but the material will be sloped to its angle of rest. Walls are expensive.
cheers, wolf k.
Woops, you are right wasnt thinking about abutments and walls but jointing. One often ignored facet of rock faces and general surface contours is that there should be a reason for anything that isnt flat or straight. Usually in a model the contours depend on the shape to be filled or to go round a feature such as a baseboard edge, whereas in real life the geological or man made structures dictate the contours. There was an article on rock faces in one of the mags last year that had a square cutout into a rock face. Now thats pretty rare in nature but there was no reason shown with the rocks solid and continuous, a couple of faults and a dip on the surface may have helped to make it look natural.
Cheers, Simon
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