An overdue update

It’s been a way to long time since my last update on the Cleveland & Eastern RR. But I am still working on it but with a much slower pace than in the past. And because I put more time into developing cool stuff for you, things went real slow – really.

But here are a couple of photos from the coal mine run section I am currently working on. It is not finished yet but I will hopefully get it done by the end of 2020.

As the coal mine run with its two coal loaders is raised about 10 cm above the mainline level I need to form a tunnel where the mainline can below the western loader. As a tunnel liner I use 5 cm thick XPS insulations board which I cut in shape to match the clearance profile. Several sections of liners are glued together and covered with plaster cloth on the inside. The cloth itself is filled with plaster and colored in a dark grey. The tunnel entrances are simple concrete portals I CNC-milled out of 5 mm foam board. To get the concrete look I used thinned putty and applied it in thin layers. After the putty dried I carved some section lines in it. Some washes of dark brown / black and some fading added to get the aged concrete look.

Same procedure applies to the stud wall separating the loader tracks from the hillside. In this case I glued the foam board into place and applied the putty and washes “in place”.