Column - Up the Creek: Tunnel liners - the MRH Forum

18, Aug. 2025

 

Column - Up the Creek: Tunnel liners - the MRH Forum

While I've used the tin foil method before

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what you show here is a definite improvement in my technique.  I just did sides and ceiling and then "mudded" them together, but the basic liner form could be used over and over with just shorter lengths and get more consistent results as well.   Thanks for more simple but effective ideas for this.

Tunnel Liners

Great article:

Ive used foam as well, use cheap gray and black spray paint and carefully spray: The foam will "gravel up" and react to the chemicals. This will give you a decent rock face.

I have also used heavy brown paper and cardboard. Spray paint the brown with flat black and then gray highlights. After drying, wad the paper up and then unfold. The wrinkles will make a decent rock image. Then cut to the size needed and install with hot glue. If the paper tries to sag, simply support it with cardboard strips.

My preferred method is a combination of the above. Make the walls from box cardboard and use brown paper as the "roof" of the tunnel. The cardboard looks like a concrete tunnel liner.

I also ballast the track and paint the rails before the tunnels go in, making them look really nice.

Randy McKenzie

Virginia Southern

HO triple decker, 27 x 32, based on the north end of the Clinchfield.

Good Article!

Nice technique!  I like the solid cast aspect of this more than the pieced together liners.  I too have used foil in the past, but for casting rock faces in place.  I found that some carving while the plaster was still somewhat soft and a bit of "wire brush weathering" gave me some good results in the past...wish I could share a picture but they were taken with film an I'll be darned if I can find any of my old layout pics! :o(

Really good stuff!

What hppened to good old bead board or foam

Charlie

For more information, please visit Tunnell Lliner.

Looks great but why?  Do you leave the acess hole open when you have visitors?

Three pieces of bead board and black latex paint will make a great tunnel liner.

Detail first 6" on facing side only and move on to something ever one will see.

What with the video, I though the article was about tunnel liners not fright trains doing a run by.  Nice but why.

Art.

Lets see how it looks...

Quote:

Looks great but why?  Do you leave the acess hole open when you have visitors?

Three pieces of bead board and black latex paint will make a great tunnel liner.

Detail first 6" on facing side only and move on to something ever one will see.

What with the video, I though the article was about tunnel liners not fright trains doing a run by.  Nice but why.

Art.

Art,

I think you answered your first question with the first two words in the same sentence.  The question, "but why?"  The answer, "Looks great" [smile]

I'm having a hard time imagining black spray painted bead board looking as good as a cast blasted rock wall.

I would be interested in seeing pictures of the method you describe.

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Best thing for tunnel liners? | TrainBoard.com - The Internet's Original

Me, too. I have subways beneath my surface layout, and I put a camera into the front car for a "motorman's view." I agonized for a long time on how to make the tunnel walls, until one day I was lying there staring at the ceiling and...there it was.



I took strips of styrene sheet and rolled Hydrocal on them with a paint roller. This looks remarkably like "textured ceiling," which was pretty much the effect I wanted for my subways. The thickness of the Hydrocal mix (or plaster, maybe even drywall compound, but I haven't tried those) should control how much texturing you get. By the way, I bought big sheets of styrene from US Plastics for a few dollars, so I had a lot of the stuff around. I just rolled these flat, and then I was able to flex the styrene around the curves as needed. This is typically 18-inch radius in HO.

This is a video of the effect. This is an old video, and the camera was actually mounted on a gondola car, and it was tilted a little, but you get the idea. For those thinking of the train-cam idea, note that you don't really notice the top of the tunnel, so that's not textured or finished in any particular way, and also note that lighting is an issue. I've since added more lighting, both bright LEDs on the front of the train, and LEDs mounted on the inside curve walls, because the camera sees the outer walls when the train is going around the curve.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g82i9arQMyw"]YouTube - Subway Tunnels[/ame]
We have only a few tunnels at our club layout, and they all have either access at the back (non-public) side of the module or else some lift-off portion that one can remove in case of a derailment or other disaster, and to aid in cleaning and maintenance.

There are not anywhere near the structural requirements on a model of a tunnel than on a real tunnel, even scaled for the size. The weight and then other factors such as soil stability, moisture, and so on, are much bigger concerns in the 1:1 prototype.