TUNNELS

First a few pictures of the tunnels and then a description of how we built them.

The tunnel entrances on the railway line consist of Studio 95 products (version for electric locomotives). The tunnel portals on the road in front of the track are the versions for diesel/steam locomotives. These are built deeper into the landscape.The tunnel portal on the cobbled street is of unknown origin, I believe something O scale.We made molds to finish the inside of the tunnels. The original wall consists of loose stones glued together. When the plaster is poured out, a few compresses are applied at the end, which form a kind of reinforcement so that the wall does not break so quickly. In order to allow the curvature in the tunnel, fine cuts are made in the joints every 2 rows of bricks with a fine saw. This allows the wall to be placed in a curve. Later, the joints are backfilled with a mixture of gray tile mortar and wood glue. First, the walls of the tunnel are made of PUR heavy foam. The plaster walls are then glued to this PUR with acrylic paste. To hold them in place until the paste dries, I made additional tools (light blue in the photo) to hold the walls in place

Brick/stone walls

First, a layer of plaster is poured into the mold and we place the gauze pad on top. This is followed by another thin layer of plaster. The gauze pad serves as reinforcement: it enables sawing on the front, in the joints of the bricks. This causes the plaster to break, but the gauze pads still hold everything together.

The rails :The tracks in this section are the classic Märklin tracks with stainless steel rails. In other parts we use Hegob (Hegob.de), KM-1 (KM-1.de) or former Hübner tracks (Märklin H series). These last 3 allow you to more easily solder the wires for the power supply. We try to use wires of around 1 to 1.5 mm2. The gravel is sifted porphyry gravel from a construction/sand and gravel trade. We sift until we get a fraction of the stones about 1.7 to 2 mm in size. Everything is glued together with a mixture of white glue and water, not forgetting a drop of dishwashing liquid.

Bridges:

The road bridges come from RT-Diorama. The front bridge was modified. The interior is first filled with PUR foam and then finished with acrylic paste and a mixture of tile joints and white wood glue. The railway bridge is self-built. Here too, the inside is coated with the same mixture of tile joint and wood glue.The railings/fences are made of Graupner parts and brass wire. These are first blackened in an acid solution and a little H2O2. Afterwards they are no longer painted; only oxidation has proven to be sufficient.

The streets :

The paved road consists of a clay base (white in the picture). Then + 10,000 orange lenses are individually glued with wood glue. Everything was then colored with a mixture of paint and gray tile grout. The street at the front is made of a mixture of gray tile grout and wood glue. This time a thick layer was applied to allow some balling of the road. Otherwise, not much has been done in this regard. Since we plan to drive cars controlled by a GPS system from “Games On Track” on this road, we have not installed a cable in the road and will therefore use the Faller Car system do not use.