THE BRM GUIDE TO... TUNNEL PORTALS
What is it about tunnels that makes them interesting? In films, they’re the location for memorable car chase scenes, an escape from enemy aircraft, or their casting shadows become a backdrop for a timely murder. Tunnels will conjure different memories for individuals, but a common trait is the obscurity that they offer. Obscurity creates intrigue, and intrigue is something that we’d all like to create on a model railway.
From an engineering perspective, tunnels are a costly last resort of reaching a destination, having exhausted other means above ground. The London Underground wouldn’t be underground, if there weren’t buildings and roads above. Neither would the Channel Tunnel exist if there wasn’t a busy shipping route on the stretch of water atop.
From a modelling perspective, a tunnel should be justified. With time, effort and money invested into creating or purchasing models, it would seem odd to want to hide them from view in a tunnel. However, what a tunnel takes away in views of trains, it can add in scenery. If used to advantage, tunnels can improve layouts, hiding fiddleyards or control panels from view. They can also introduce complexity to scenes through changes in scenic heights.
The best tunnels on layouts are considered during the planning stage. Adding a tunnel to an already-created layout can create difficulties in adapting existing baseboard heights, or changing the scenery above to blend with that already in place.
Tunnels vary in style, shape and purpose. From ornate stone castellated buttresses and arched entrances, to stark angular flat poured-concrete slabs. Regional differences today are less pronounced than in the past, when railway companies or land owners would construct using accessible materials, or in-keeping with local architecture, dressing stonework or constructing from brick accordingly.
An important aspect to make look right
