A Start

This scene has two separate bridges and water courses.

Here's the smaller of the two, crossed by a Micro Engineering girder bridge.  The abutments are scratchbuilt from styrene.  Note how I haven't created final contours at this point for the fill below the track.  Real dirt and rocks will be used for that.  Various other details like guard rails will also come later.

A couple feet away is this truss.  Before painting the plaster, I smoothed the future water area with drywall mud and sanded it smooth.  I wasn't sure yet exactly where the banks would end up, so I smoothed a wider swath than would eventually be needed.  Everything 3-D received the same latex tan paint, and the temporary backdrop was added.

Next

Before adding ground cover, I painted the finished backdrop.

I determined where the water would go, and underpainted the river bottoms.  I followed this by gluing down the initial ground cover sand. 

The fill at left is underway.  I piled natural dirt and rocks to create the fill slopes.  The same would be done on the other end of this bridge, along with the girder span.

More Buildup

With the locations of each water course established, I mixed a slurry of sand and diluted white glue for the banks.  I spread a couple of layers to build some height, allowing the glue to dry in between.  The mixture was applied with the same palette knife I use to carve plaster rocks. 

I then painted the final creek bottom color with acrylics.  All of the green is black mixed with cadmium yellow deep.  Moving away from the center, increasing amounts of yellow, and then tan craft paint, are mixed in.  All of this is blended thoroughly to ensure smooth transitions.  Visible brush marks detract so they were ruthlessly eliminated.  While I had the paints out I also weathered the abutments.

Unlike the earlier rocky canyon of Cedar Creek, the water here flows through finer sediment in a wider bottomland.  There's no modeling of rock or rapids, so the painted plaster will serve to impart all of the water's coloration.  Study prototype photos for ideas on colors and patterns.

Doin' the Wave

Now it was time for "water."  Compare the finished banks and bottom color to the previous photo of this location above.  I decided to add waves now so stray ground cover material didn't get picked up by the brush.

Wave texture is gloss Mod Podge applied with maybe a 1/4" brush.  I use a jabbing motion, which adds greater wave height and again avoids leaving brush marks.

The scene looked like this when the Mod Podge dried.  I only used one coat.

Finishing Up

With the water in I applied the rest of the ground cover.

My usual ground foam and static grass was glued in place.  Taller green grass and broadleaf shrubs grow closer to the water.  I removed the bridges for this step so I could easily reach the areas beneath them.

Both streams received similar treatment, although I did try to keep them from being identical.

Finally came permanent bridge installation, guard rails, painting the track, and ballast.

I'm seriously liking that water...

What a great start to the weekend............

with a another chapter in the 8th sub.  Thanks for the update and showing a great way to do really good looking water.  The bar will set high if the WPF thread

Steve

Great looking scenes

When it's time for me to

When it's time for me to create water I will be sending you an invitation . These are really great looking rivers!

Thanks all

I appreciate the views and comments.

Bookmarked for future reference

Great Scene!

I really like the sagebrush that you have next to the bridge abutments. Did you make the sagebrush or purchase it? I would really like to get some sage brush like this, as I am also modeling western scenes. It is really hard to find foliage that even comes closer to matching this color. I tried painting some ground foam in a color close to this, but all it did was soak up the paint. Thanks.

Sagebrush

It's based on Scotch "synthetic steel wool" or "paint stripping pads."  The latter are currently available in my area at Lowe's, and are stocked with the paint sundries.  I coat pieces of this material with 3M Super77 spray adhesive, then apply AMSI "Eucalyptus" or Accurail "Sagebrush" coarse ground foam.

Rob "Waterman" Spangler

OK Rick

I'll take care of you and Michael next time I find myself in FL. 

Nice looking water and river banks.

The only question I have is where does it all come from? The hills behind don't look like they get much rainfall. Is there a mountain range behind them providing snow melt? ..DaveB

Water source

"an artisian well"

   I looked up the WP 8th sub and it ran thru nevada and utah so there's a good chance of some snowy mountains somewhere upstream :> )  ..DaveB

I'll take care of you and

I hope you don't charge by the gallon!

"Perhaps it looks a bit foreign to outsiders?"

   Yeah, it depends on where you live. We have rivers running thru dry foothills but they usually have a higher mountain range just beyond them so the source is obvious. In Cali the wetter areas have tree covered mountains unless they are high country., then they would be mostly rock. The drier areas have the brown hills by the end of spring. If you could see a bit more to the left there would be the Sierra nevada  range of peaks in that Verdi crossing photo, those golden hills are in the eastern slope rain shadow..DaveB

Rock Debris

This scene is awesome to look at. I do have one question though. What do you use for your Rock Debris? Under and around your abutments are litters with rock and sand debris. Do you use talus for this? I'm currently working on my river scene and need some help with the adding some of this.

Thank you,

Rocks

I built the fills in layers.  The first was some eroded shale material that had a range of sizes from fines to about 1/4".  I piled this on until I had most of the fill contour established.

On top of that I added some finer sand in different colors.  Some was the same tan/gray that I used for basic ground cover, the rest was a darker gray that approximated prototype fills in the area modeled, which look like combinations of dirt, old ballast, cinders and whatever else. 

All of these materials were obtained from nature, but if you don't have sources handy there are alternatives.  Big box home centers in my area stock play sand which can make nice ground cover, and they also have some broken aggregate type stuff in the same aisles.  Airbrushing and dry-brushing can change the colors once these are glued down, so finding an exact color match to your prototype isn't needed.  Unfortunately much of what is sold commercially is uniformly screened so getting a realistic variety of sizes can be tough.  Pounding larger pieces with a hammer can help.  Another potential problem is the prevalence of rounded rocks that aren't usually appropriate to represent blasted or crushed fill, and are often unrealistic for use in streambeds.

styrene as concrete

Great work as always. My question is what do you use to fill cracks in the styrene abutments in order to get them to look seamless like poured concrete? I've got a few I've gotta create for my layout.

That's some beautiful water,

That's some beautiful water, Rob.

Mike