YPU's 6mm Scenery

[YPU]

That remains to be seen as I actually make a bit of landmass behind the facade. It currently has maybe 8mm over the top of the tunnel itself, but the earthworks don't need to go much taller then that as long as the shape of the tunnel doesn't show trough. Alternatively I give this whole thing a small hill of its own. Or a steep cliff like the one I made before. I should note the tunnel doesnt stand tall over this one, maybe should have used it in the picture setup.

[YPU]

and in another another paralel project, here is a first test of schrublands I've been working on for a while. Just colored old towel with foam covering and clump foliage. Its a terrain type most games have rules for, and boy is most of the world either developed or something like this, yet doesn't seem to appear on tables all that much.
I'm happy enough with the results here, so I'm going to try and do my old trick of now producing enough to cover about 40% of a full wargaming table in one big batch.









I'm happy with the result here, not too many steps or time consuming, the only thing I'm likely to change for the big pieces is more open space to actually place figures, something I didn't have the room for on this small tester obviously.

[Burgundavia]

All this terrain. So much envy. Definitely want to get into a smaller scale at some point.

[YPU]

All this terrain. So much envy. Definitely want to get into a smaller scale at some point.

Thank you! And I highly recommend it, 6mm is the largest scale at which I feel like you can have an actual battle on the table.

Meanwhile the bigger shrubbery areas have stalled as I've ran out of both cheap craft paint and clump foliage. The latter has been ordered and the first I plan to buy tomorrow, so stay tuned for more shrubberies, if those pesky knights who say ni don't get to them first.

[6milPhil]

Those scenics work well. You got the mix and range of colours just right. 

[YPU]

Hey, new old forum, time for a small update to the small stuff.

I've just glued a bunch of greenery to the tunnel entrance. I think I took some pictures of the rest of the making process but haven't tracked them down.








You'll note the back side is rather steep, this is so it buts up against other hills and cliffs nicely, or at the edge of the table I suppose.


I did also create a bunch more of the shrublands, but with them as well as with the tunnel I've been struggling with the foliage. Not really been able to get it in such a way that looks natural to me for some reason. With the shrubland at least I've been making sure LoS from any one edge to another is blocked at some point but it kinda just feels like bushes randomly plomped on the area. That first test piece above somehow looks more organic rather than random to me, but I can't put me finger on it. Same with the tunnel truth be told. Though most of the greenery there should be hidden by the hill its hugging, and nobody will look at it that closely but its still bugging me.

[Andy in Germany]

There would he a parapet but it wouldn’t he higher than the top of the hill!

This may or may not work. At least, I think clicking on it will take you to the image:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/Z1ZkGhdLE59Y3CJN6

It's a Google Street View of a tunnel near my In-law's house in Ise, Japan. Notice the Parapet very much higher than the hillside.

[YPU]

Yeah modern Japanese ones seem to very much protrude from the hill and the parapet is more of a facade on some of them I think. Or a very big and ornate flange to stop stuff from falling in anyway.

Either way, I think with all the ground work and greenery on it now the point is moot, since I have plants overhanging the parapet entirely! This little landform stands taller than most of my hills, but looking around that appears to be pretty common as well. If there is a big vertical hard rocky cliff face, that's where you drill in to, not the loose soil slope around it! Its a bit counter intuitive, like trying to drill into the hardest bit on purpose but I imagine it makes the whole architecture of the tunnel more stable and maybe even simpler.

[Pattus Magnus]

Yeah modern Japanese ones seem to very much protrude from the hill and the parapet is more of a facade on some of them I think. Or a very big and ornate flange to stop stuff from falling in anyway. … If there is a big vertical hard rocky cliff face, that's where you drill in to, not the loose soil slope around it! Its a bit counter intuitive, like trying to drill into the hardest bit on purpose but I imagine it makes the whole architecture of the tunnel more stable and maybe even simpler.

Both of these points align with modern road and railway design that I have seen in western Canada (in the Rocky Mountains and Coastal range). Using the built up parapets (at tunnel openings and along embankments) is more and more common wherever there is a steep slope to keep stuff from rolling directly into the road or rail line. Older road stretches are being retrofitted, where feasible, but in places there are just chain link screens to slow and channel debris. Some of the stuff that breaks loose can be pretty large, especially through the spring and summer when water that seeped into cracks starts thawing and pops fracture lines open. Boulders the size of cars can break loose!

Similar thing with finding hard rock for road beds and tunnels, it tends to stay stable. I don’t know about mountains in Japan, but in western Canada the mountains are usually layered sedimentary (sandstone, limestone and the worst, mudstone), with huge igneous intrusions from old volcanic activity (granite, basalt, etc). The glaciers and rivers carved valleys along fault lines and through the layers, so road and rail lines cuts through rock with a variety of hardnesses. It adds some challenges to the road building! (Take a look at pictures of the Kicking Horse Canyon upgrades on the Trans-Canada Highway - they got tired of dealing with crumbling soft rock and wanted to add lanes so they rebuilt the road on a surface cantilevered above the canyon).

I find road design fascinating and it is very cool seeing miniature versions in this thread!

[YPU]

*snipped for length*

I find road design fascinating and it is very cool seeing miniature versions in this thread!

Hmm, yeah I'm out of my depth here, we lack the hills let alone mountains for railway tunnels here in the Netherlands. If we have a tunnel its probably a pipe going down and under a river.

And I fully agree, model making is a fascinating lens that lets me look at infrastructure in a new light. It will always be an abstraction, but there are things which contribute to making it look "right" that you don't normally notice until you look trough that lens.