Does anyone know of any premade tunnel liners? I spent several hours last night casting Woodland Scenic Hydrocal tunnel liners and am not thrilled with the results. The mold is very flimsy and it took me several tries to get the consistency where it was almost acceptable. I know I’ve inquired about this a while back and some of you love em but don’t count me in as part of that crowd. So if you have either another way of making them or know of someone who has them made up let me know. I may give the extruded foam a try tomorrow.
may be a little triple expan foam might work ive tried it with my stuff and there is alot of shaving involved but the turn out might be what you are looking for use a plastic tube or jar that is more than the hight that you need then get the touch-n-foam spray it let dry for at least 5-6 hours then carve
What’s your goal for the tunnel liners? And, perhaps more important, what’s the viewing angle looking into the tunnels?
For my subway tunnels, I am using a video camera in the lead car, so I needed full scenery. But, I did take some liberties with the construction techniques. My tunnels have a rectangular cross-section, vertical walls and a horizontal roof, rather than a “bored” circular cross-section. The roof sections are not particularly visible, so I didn’t put any effort into them.
For the walls, I took thin styrene strips, as wide as the tunnels walls were tall. Then I made up a runny thin batch of Hydrocal, and applied it to the walls with a paint roller. This is basically the technique used for textured ceilings. Once the Hydrocal set, I had a bumpy surface. I painted it gray, with some black added for accent. I found I could easily bend these strips around an 18-inch curve with no cracking of the Hydrocal.
It looked like this before I put a roof over it:
I agree with the “good enough” philosophy by McClelland, I believe. My personal choice is to model the tunnel interiors only as far as they are seen from a normal viewing angle. I use large blocks of styrofoam or layers of extruded foam for the basic tunnel shape so it is easy to texture the opening area before I install them and add portals.
I am in agreement with the do only what you can see philosophy, my tunnels walls would generally be blasted rock maybe an occasional block or brick lined just to break things up a little but not really necessary. I have been kicking around using either random stone paper or the vinyl sheet stuff you can by in A C Moore and just use something like a cardboard tube or maybe even a large diameter piece of pvc pipe. The hydrocal walls ar just too danged thin and even when you get em right they seem fragile as all heck. Mr. B you gave me an idea from your soupy mix. The other day in Lowes I saw spray on textured spray for repair on textured ceilings. Maybe spray the inside of a tube etc. I may just opt for flat black styrene walls.
If your looking for the concrete liner look, then extruded foam is the way to go. Sand smooth and paint. The cut rock effect can be achieved by crumpling up heavy tin foil and then smoothing out and gluing to foam that has been carved out.Then paint. You can also just gouge out the foam for the cut rock look. Easy and cheap.
Brent
Hi from Belgium,
I use home made wall casting to give the illusion of a real wall in the entrance of the tunnel. I don’t try to model it a long way, just a few inch from the entrance is enough. The master was a KIBRI HO scale plastic plate of rugged stones. Use dark shade of gray and black to color it, so you give a better illusion of a black hole.
I put a small ceiling just above the tunnel portal entrance no more that five to seven inch in lenght, I paint it black, foam is often used.
Avoid to put tunnel entrance perpendicular to the viewing place, so you could’nt see to far in the tunnel.
Marc