Tunnelling

Once the sub-structures for the tunnel portals were installed I thought I should go ahead and build the tunnels so I could move on to forming the mountains. I thought it would be more complicated if I roughed out the mountains first before adding the tunnels, so it was tunnelling first, mountains second.

I used scrap material from around the workshop for building the tunnels. I wasn't much concerned about the detail in them so scrap material was sufficient. My only concerns for inside the tunnels were that they appeared dark and dank, had just a little detailing to withstand a casual glance inside, and they directed viewing straight through the portals and didn't allow for all the unfinished foam inside the mountains to be seen. 

Side walls were built up from foam board with glued on sheet styrene embossed with blocks. Cell-U-Clay was used to fill gaps in joints between walls. Some black ballast and sand was glued to the roadbed to provide a little texture. Everything inside was painted black.

Semi-circular tunnel roofs were formed from black mat board. Joints between the roofs and the portals and side walls were covered up with aluminum foil that was painted black on one side. When the tunnel structure was finished it was painted with black acrylics on its outer surface. 

Does it look like the real thing on the inside? Well, not quite, but it does capture some of the foreboding :-)