Rivers are a tough business.  Especially rivers that are cascading as they go.  When I first tackled this scene years ago, I learned a few useful things though.  One is that realistic water, poured deep enough, takes a while to cure, and somewhere in the middle of fresh and cured, is a point where you can manipulate it into nice little waves or whitecaps.  Woodland Scenics sells a product specifically for making waterfalls or waves, but I found just taking a tiny brush dabbed in white acrylic was enough.   Repeatedly tapping into the drying ‘water’ caused each thing to give a little – the water allowed itself into a more teardrop, or wave shape readily, and the paint on the brush was injected into it giving it a nice froth.  And because the ‘water’ was on the way to being dry, it didn’t immediately sink back to level.  It froze that way.

Because my previous river was (accidentally) level, pouring the ‘water’ on thick worked.  However with the river cascading downhill in this revised version, you just can’t pour it deep.  It runs wherever it can.  And the thinner layer that results also dries very quickly.

I did try a few new tricks though, including diluting the emerald green acrylic paint I intended to use to match the water of the Coquihalla in, well, real water, and then dipping a paintbrush back and forth into that and the realistic ‘water’, essentially dyeing it.  It came out okay, I think.  And in a few places where the ‘water’ was deep enough, I was able to whip up some froth.  Probably I will have to resort to using the WS ‘waterfall’ product to really finish this (not a huge fan of it after a few test runs), but, still pretty happy as is.  Even my ‘aerial’ shots appear to be matching real life aerial shots to an impressive degree, although I can’t quite get the same angles others have owing to my wall.

Anyway, I’m now working on aligning the tunnel segments one last time, doing some trim work, and then looking forward to piecing them together over Xmas, once and for all.

Finally!  Painting in the Coquihalla after a 2 year absence.  Yup, I tried it before, but had my tunnel spacing wrong and had to split up the scene and move one tunnel back.  Destroyed a beautifully done river that I was so happy with. But, that’s the price of getting it right.

Here’s the prototype from the air:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/angelad7000/6750660139/

Thanks to this awesome photo, I was able to figure more things out and work to get it as exact as possible in terms of the river’s path and surrounding rocks.  Taking an ‘aerial’ of it with my camera, I’m stunned at how close it is.  A few more rock adjustments, and we’re good.

I did the usual mix of emerald green paint, although it seems a bit off compared to last time.  I think the last painting I did the blue was.. darker.  Or something.  Anyway this was just a test.  Once I get it nailed down, I’ll do the realistic water treatment, and my ‘paint swirl in somewhat dried realistic water’ trick to make real waves.

This scene is really coming together!!

Busy day on the KV. When I started out, I never expected that my model would look any good. Had no right to: after all, I had never done modelling in my life. So it’s an understatement to say I’m pleased with progress thus far. The tunnels are really beginning to resemble their real life counterparts. I did some fixing on the first tunnel entrance.. making it more circular as per the prototype.

But now it gets tough. When I ‘designed’ this mess, the tunnels were all going to be one piece, aligned by marker and careful attention. That went out the window when I realized I had certain distances between tunnels wrong, water too high, etc. So of course, I ditched the plan and broke them up. And it’s worked well. Detail work on tunnel ends is much easier when you don’t have your hands squeezed between two mountain ranges. But then the day must come when you have to assemble them again. And this being the famous Quintette tunnels, created in perfect alignment by part-man, part-wizard KVR engineer Andrew McCulloch, I knew I had to get them in perfect alignment or I’d never hear the end of it from the little voices in my head.

Having no clue at all how to do this, n the first thing I did was make sure the tunnels were level with each other. Turns out they weren’t. . I needed to sand down one end of the third tunnel (errant spackling), and then (cringing all the way) break loose my beloved bridge footing and sand it down so that it was level with the footing at the other side. I have no idea how all this is going to come together with tracks, but I figure at least if I start out straight and level, I’m in the right zone.

I took multiple aerial shots via my phone as I worked to align. Then I went and did the same finagling between tunnels 3 and 4. It’s not perfect, but from the viewer’s perspective it won’t matter.

Now the decision point. I need to recreate the Coquihalla river between tunnels 2 and 3. But doing that usually means fixing in place tunnel 3. And that’s a problem, because there is river back behind tunnel 3 that I can’t reach once it’s in place. I’ve settled on a tricky strategy for now of tracing the footprint of the mountain for tunnel 3,and then building a river bed with spackling within those lines. I’ll then create the river with the fake water, and then slide tunnel 3 back in. Because of the awkward space behind the tunnels I won’t be able to fill in the cracks between river bed and mountain, but that’s OK. The viewer will never see it.

Some more shots. I’m still proud of that tiny little pillar at the back.  And I like the inside shots I’m geting.  They do kind of remind me of the real thing a bit, which I’ve been in a few times.  The real thing is almost like a Roman ruin.  There’s a temple feel to it, even though it’s just reinforcement.

Flash forward to today – I decided to really get it in gear and get my river back between the first and second tunnels in my Quintette Tunnels scene.  As it happens, I had posted pictures of my model in a Hope BC Facebook group.  They were very generous in their compliments, and one lady was kind enough to post a link to some aerial shots she had taken during a flyover of the site.  I was at once thrilled and distressed – being able to see the side of the second tunnel from an angle that is impossible from the ground meant I now knew how I had had portrayed it was slightly off.

Here’s the pic: https://www.flickr.com/photos/angelad7000/6750660139/

You might ask why this matters.  After all, this side of the tunnel would not be visible, since it faces the wall.  But I am a perfectionist.  I did not want a facade of the tunnel.. I wanted it to be as detailed as possible.  Even if I couldn’t see it.  So I went in again, chipped away some rock, used styrene strips to fix the concrete sleeve work on the outside, spackled it, colored it.. and voila.  Much closer and much happier result.

I also took the opportunity to remove and sand down the tunnel portal on the outside.  It had been cast too thick, as the photo linked above revealed.  I took half an hour to grind it down to more or less the right thickness.  Happy now.