Thanks fellows!
We took a long weekend in Chicago to celebrate our 48th anniversary. We stayed at The James hotel, had a great room, ate well, got to the Driehaus Museum and the Van Gogh exhibit at the Art Institute and I gained 4 pounds. I already lost a pound. I started to design the mountain. The first step in doing the mountain seems to be getting the tunnel portals located and determining the elevations of the mountain at various positions. I decided to try and make my own portals. I did this specifically because of two concerns: the fact that the entrances are on curves and the length of some of my locomotives specifically the H-8 Allegheny and the Pennsy S-1 monster 6-4-4-6. Both have enormous overhangs that exceeds the size of most of the commercially available portals.
I'm using 1/8" Masonite that I have hanging around from various projects. I first made a mockup using some bead foam which I hacked out with my Tippi hot-wire foam cutter. I had two specification to meet: the aforementioned overhangs, and the extreme height of my auto-rack car. The auto rack is substantially taller than the scale 16 feet of the Allegheny. The portal is almost 5 inches wide. The curve diameters on the two tunnels are O-96 on the outside and O-88 on the inside.
After checking that everything fit, I did a layout on the Masonite and cut it out. The first time I tried to use my jig saw, but the thin blade may not have been tensioned enough and was wandering so bad that I had to scrap the piece. I then used my saber saw to cut the opening and the circular hand saw to do the straight cuts. I also used the chop saw to do the width cuts.
I then tried out the first piece to ensure it cleared everywhere.
I don't have any double stack container cars so they may not fit. All the real railroads had to increase their tunnel clearances when the double stacks came along.
I needed to make them more interesting so I'm adding some layers to the face. After doing some photo research, I realize that I'm overdoing it a bit, but it will be interesting.
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I'm not convinced that my design works and tomorrow I may rearrange it a bit. After I got the design down I measured and cut the other three. Did I mention that I need four portals for two tracks in and out of the mountain. I found it easier to cut the insides with the saber saw first and then cut the pieces to size. It made the piece more stable to support the saw as I did the cutting.
Here's the rest of the parts waiting to be glued together tomorrow. I used the belt sander to straighten any edges that needed it and knock off any furry edges.
The portals need some thickness looking into the tunnels. I plan on gluing some green styrofoam to the back and then trimming it flush with the opening. After some mild filling and painting it will give the "concrete" some more heft. I haven't decided yet what I'm going to do to line the first few inches of the tunnels. Since the tunnels are all curved, you won't need much interior to hide the fact that the mountain is hollow.
