The scenery on the CWRy needed to start somewhere and I also found that there was a need to build some tunnels. The first tunnel to be worked on is located on the Colorado & Southern line from the only town on the layout and the rest of the interchange world. In reality this tunnel is filling a large hole in the wall between the main layout room and the lower staging yard. Once the layout is completed this tunnel will not be very visible so not a lot of detail is being added. This tunnel is cut out of the mountain and is lined by the rock. The entrance to the tunnel will be faced with a wooden portal.
To create the rock lining a total of 6 rock wall castings were made by using a Woodland Scenics plastic mould and light weight Hydracal. The cast pieces where then cut and filed to fit together. The six pieces were glued together using Weldbond white builders glue. Once dry and set the outside of the tunnel had plaster cloth added to increase the strength of the seams between the castings. The seams on the inside of the tunnel were filled and shaped with more Hydracal. The final assembly was then washed with stone grey, slate grey and black water based paints all thinned with water.
In the 3 images below you can see the results of this effort. This first image shows the hole in the wall I created for both this tunnel and a future project including the incline branch from the lower level to the upper level. In the 2nd image the tunnel liner is test fitted. In the 3rd image the tunnel liner is shown in place with the wooden portal. The ballast for the track will be added before adding the mountain.
