An icy cold weekend

The cold, icy weekend meant lots of progress on the layout. First I reconfigured the slope of the hill behind Potomac Creek to make it look more like a country road. This resulted in a slightly sunken road at the top of the ridge. Then I painted the rocks at Wiellep's Cut with a dark base color. I find that when using water putty for rock carvings, one can not just stain the rocks like you can with hydrocal. You have to completely paint the rocks. I use a dark base acrylic color and then add lighter drybrushed colors on top.

 

Next I worked on the culvert at Accokeek Creek. It is built like a railroad tunnel, but without the tracks. I used the laser to cut the parts except for the styrene blocks on the top cap. Those I made from a strip of .125 inch styrene, shaping each block to look like stone.

The culvert is a layered composite of 1/8th inch plywood, plastic embossed stone paper, laser cut  arch stones and
plastic strip stone cap pieces.

The brick lined culvert pipe.

Cutting and fitting the culvert under the tracks.

View through the culvert

I also worked on installing the grist mill, but it was tricky as I had to add the mill race to the mill as I went along. That took a bit of cutting, filling and test fitting. I had to reconfigure the terrain under the mill race to make room. I sealed the terrain with water putty. I need to make the area water tight as I plan to pour resin to simulate the water and it needs a water tight base.

Working on the tail race. I still need to build the feed race sluice.

Overview of the scene after a coat of base color. The trees are just stand-ins to show the overall
design. The wooded hill will help downplay the visual dominance of the dam.