I’m struggling with two areas of the Middle-Earth with running water, as depicted by the Fellowship movie, where the water seems to flow in a rather mysterious way. The first is the Bywater mill, which the movie shows as an overshot mill (i.e. water flow is on top of the mill wheel, as seen in the photo below).
Yet, there is no sign of a dam or a mill pond anywhere. One would expect that the Bywater bridge, which Gandalf crosses in the small inset, would actually be a dam bridge, but the water level is the same on both sides. I would need to solve this conundrum of where the water comes from somehow for a future terrain project featuring the mill, the bridge, and the Bywater Pool. Any suggestions? Should I do a waterfall further upriver, with a mill race diverted at the top of the fall, or perhaps make a dam upriver, or maybe even depict the Bywater bridge as a some sort of a dam bridge? I’m kinda leaning towards having a waterfall upstream – that way the mill and the bridge will look like they did in the film.
The second peculiar water flow is with the aqueduct near the west gate of Moria, as seen in the pic below. Note that the aqueduct top seems to be visible in the lower right hand corner of the screenshot showing the Fellowship looking across the Watcher’s pool towards the Walls of Moria.
Now, the Watcher’s pool formed when Sirannon was dammed, and its water filled the shallow bowl-like valley beyond the Stair Falls (which, I assume, are depicted by the aqueduct in the Fellowship movie). Now, my question is: why is the top of the aqueduct at the same approximate level as the flood pool surface? Since Sirannon flowed through the shallow valley, there should be a cut in the western side of the valley rim allowing the water to escape – the top of the aqueduct should thus be much lower than the rim of the rocks circling the valley on the west side, and, presumably, there should be a dam blocking the cut. Instead of the top of the aqueduct, we should see the top of this makeshift dam in the lower screenshot. Another terrain project of mine will depict the valley as it was before the flooding. My idea is to set the aqueduct much lower, and have a gap in the circling rocks. What do you think?
