Yes

I'd say yes. To be very picky, the loose stones look too placed. normally higher water runs will bury a lot of the rock with sediment.

Having them placed is fine, but they would be placed for some kind of reason.

It really looks fantastic though, I'm just being very, very picky

Agreed. Very nice, but looks manicured

I agree with Scarpia - very nice, but the stones look manicured - as in deliberately placed rather than natural.

To reduce erosion, that might be deliberate - but you should have that in mind.

Also, I like to see sediment in these small streambeds and some mud/dirt on the rocks. That's where my zip texturing methods really come in handy because you can zip texture the rocks and streambed with plaster dirt powder using a brush, and then flush the streambed with water from an eye-dropper and form a natural sediment flow pattern, plus leave some mud / dirt on the rocks in a natural way.

You may need to cover or temporarily remove the bushes, however. Getting zip texturing powder on the bushes won't look correct.

Then as a final step once the zip texturing dirt powder sets up, I'd come in and add some water gloss effects using acrylic gloss medium mixed with a little of the dirt powder.

But like Scarp, I'm being very picky. First blush is your scenery work is well above average and quite well done.

I'd like to add one more

I'd like to add one more thing to Scarpia and Joe> First let me say your building very nice scenery and your work on the Ballast and brush is A-1

I have spent many hours walking along mountain RR Tracks, when the Culverts have the slow sloping run off and were surrounded by that much brush, the brush would usually over grow the run off and the water runs on top the ground but under the brush. With more of a slope you would see much less brush and then the rocks may be more exposed from rain and weather like what you have modeled. Then again at the bottom of the slope dirt and weeds will again cover the run off area and only the water side of the rocks would be the part of the rocks exposed the rest of the rocks would be burred in the slope.

The larger the culvert and the faster the water runs the more rock would be exposed.

The Large rocks just under the culvert as support are good leave them but, add the dirt like Joe explained and either reduce the size of the brush close to the run off or remove the rocks and cover the runoff area in a few spots with more brush so the run off still shows but the brush is covering 60% of it.

Just my few cents so to speak Keep up the good work.

RGDan

Culvert

Thanks for the kind comments and suggestions. Scarpia and Joe- you're right, the rocks looks too placed and/or not blended in sufficiently with the surrounding stream bed. Something about them bothered me but I couldn't put my finger on it. Either the rocks need to be blended via Joe's suggestion or removed per RGDan's suggestion and some more brush added. For someone who's spent 25 years walking in the woods and studying streams, you'd think I would have figured that out. Sometimes an additional set of eyes can really help. Thanks again.

Manicured?

I'm not sure about anywhere else, but where I live the rocks around culverts like this would have a "set in place" look to them, because they very often are set in place.  They are placed so as to avoid rapid erosion of the soil by the water rushing out of the culvert in periods of high run off, so the rocks are a part of the installation in many cases, not just naturally occurring.

So while the culvert and ditch should not look manicured, the rocks will not always be completely random, IMO.  All the rocks really need is a bit of blending.  Mabe a few tufts of static grass etc. growing among the rocks?

Scarpia makes a good point about the sediment.  It might look better to have some rocks in the bottom of the creek bed that have been mostly covered with sediment and where the remaining low water in the creek is flowing.

Nice Overall

With a nod to the comments you've already received, I think you're doing a good job on color and texture.  The equipment and track look nice too.  A viewer taking in the entire scene in person would likely find the area in question more convincing than it does in close-up photos isolating the culvert, since he won't just be concentrating on that one aspect.

In my area, I also see a lot of culverts where the rocks look atrificially arranged to control erosion, as Kevin R. noted above.  This effect is more pronounced right around the railroad embankment itself, less so as you move away.  Adding some more dirt and smaller rocks to blend the water course into its surroundings could help, as could throwing in some weeds appropriate for wet conditions

A real culvert

As Kevin points out, rock placement is done for prevention of erosion (which could cause flow restriction). On well maintained trackage, much brush and blockage gets removed periodically. Here is an actual culvert placed under a road adjacent to the Carolinian-Piedmont line near Salisbury, NC (sorry for the quality - took this from the Amtrak passenger car through the window). There was a trickle of water through the culvert, but I did not get a good position for taking the shot.

Culvert - Nature

 First, let me say with the others that you have a good grasp of techniques. It really looks good.

Second, and before you rush off to 'correct' things that others don't necessarily care for, nature doesn't do the same thing in every instance. Who is to say that your culvert doesn't exist somewhere? It's like trees - not all of them (nor telegraph poles) are straight up and down. If it looks good to you, GO FOR IT. 

Third, the comments about most folks never noticing other than "gee, thats really neat," is right on target. They won't. They'll just appreciate the work you have done and their mind's eye will "fill in the blanks."

Sometimes the politically correct "techhies" ain't all that correct.

nice

 your culvert is nicly done. my only comment to add to the others is that I believe that a real culvert would be burried slightly more. You have nicly shown a separate layer of sub roadbed ballast and it is in this layer that you have the culvert. I think that you would find the real thing much deeper to offset the weight of locos and rolling stock above. 

good job.. 

Now do it again until you get it right.... Just kiddin!!

whence the water?

Culverts aren't a natural phenomenon, so applying natural randomness doesn't make sense.  Culverts are put in place by the right-of-way engineering department, so that water doesn't build up and wash out the roadbed.

The questions which come into my mind are:  where is the water coming from?  and is it possible for water to flow this way?  I can't see the other side of the tracks that well, but there should be some sort of gully or pond over there which can't drain on that side of the tracks, so the culvert lets the water out to the visible side to drain away.  The water over there has to be at least as high as the water coming out of the end of the pipe.  The other thing I wonder about is whether the pipe is level, or at least angling down towards the viewer.  It sort of looks like it's pointing upwards, which would not be the way civil engineers would do it.  It may be an optical illusion though--it's a little hard to tell in the photos.  I think it should probably be deeper in the sub-roadbed as well, but I'm not certain of that either.

As far as the modelling goes, I think it looks good, though.  Even the water looks convincing.

Looks good!

The culvert looks very nice. The water is very realistic looking. I think just a little soil or grass around the rocks would make it perfect. You want the rocks to look "planted" rather than placed. I disagree with all of the other mumbo jumbo. The rocks could certainly have been placed by the railroad crew. In fact, the culvert has a recently-maintained look to it, as if maybe the M.O.W. crew just cleared it out. As for the pond or whatever needing to be on the other side-there could be an elevation or something there that causes the ballast to wash out, so the culvert was added. I really like how the realistic the water looks.

Clear Water

Yeah, I like the sparkling clear water look, too. For me, the part that niggles a little when I start getting hyper critical is the large rocks farthest away from the culvert.

For fun, here's a bit of Photoshopping where I've tried to incorporate just a little of the various suggestions. No zip texturing, though. (Photoshop doesn't seem to have a tool  for that. Go figure.)

Dave Stewart

Medium sized rocks too

Dave a few medium sized rocks will help. You have the small rocks on the bed and the larger rocks on the sides but you need a few in between rocks to bend the two together.....

Just my thoughts

Steve

Culvert

One of the most comon features of culverts is that they are often full of silt and other debries. This is based on observations from over 30 years of engineering and construction career.  I wouldn't be quick to change what you have done, but something to consider for the next ones you model.

Interesting conversation

I did a quick google image search on culverts, and as you can imagine there are as many variations on this theme as you can think of.

These are examples of the kind of culvert that I seem to remember mostly from the North East US.

This image is of interest to me, as it shows how the water makes a deep pool directly underneath the culvert itself (from Trout Unlimited)

from Southland Pipe and Supply

Other pictures show a variety of clogged, and newly installed culverts - but one thing that seems to stand out is that culverts that constantly have water moving through them (as yours appears to) are less likely to clog. It may be due that for "dry" culverts, more sediment is washed in and through, but I'm not a hydrologist.

Like I say, interesting stuff! 

Great Comments

Great comments all- I appreciate the feedback. To answer a few questions, the culvert is intended to provide drainage for the other side of the roadbed and the pipe slopes slightly down (though it appears to slope up slightly in one of the photos). I think the larger rocks need to go and the vegetation needs to move in toward the drainage area in order to better represent a small drainage culvert. I like Dave Stewart's photoshop, although I'm a little disappointed that he couldn't add any zip texturing. And the pipe should be much deeper in the roadbed- it's a scale 2' from the bottom of the ties and the weight of passing trains would crush it. At this point, though, I'm not going to move it. Either the changes to the rocks and vegetation will make it look acceptable to me or I'll remove it.

The lesson here is photos, photos, and more photos. There was a slight depression in the hardshell between two of the cardboard strips at this location and I thought I'd install a culvert instead of filling in the depression. Had I looked at some photos, I would have realized that the depression was too shallow for a culvert. I have hundreds of photos of rolling stock, structures, scenery, etc. but thought I would work from the minds eye on this one. Studying and/or copying prototype photos is the easiest way to avoid making some of these mistakes.

Thanks again for the suggestions. For those of us trying to get everything on the layout as prototypically correct as possible, including the scenery, the feedback is invaluable.

Tom Patterson

Rather than a pipe how about a concrete box culvert?

While I agree a pipe probably would not work on the prototype, a small concrete box culvert would work in this setting on the prototype. That could be shallower and still support the weight of the trains overhead - something like the photo below, although a little smaller.

Nice Work

My only initial observation when viewing your photos after I was impressed by how well the scenery and especially the small "trickle" of water looked on your scene, was that the culvert was probably indeed a little shallow, but that was already touched upon.  What I want to know is, when do we get to see more photos of your layout? Looks really, really nice!

Very Nicely Done

When I was a kid, our neighbors had a culvert almost exactly like the one you modeled in their backyard (sans railroad right of way, of course). My friends and I spent countless hours playing in the "crick" - hunting salamander, frogs, and crayfish. Your scene, not only rings true (didn't notice the "manicured" nature of the rocks until others pointed it out) it brought back a flood of happy memories!

Good job!

-George

Material

Tom, what is the materials used in the foreground?

I think it looks good btw

John

Merrill. WI

Concrete box culvert

Thanks for the photo and the suggestion, Joe. Unfortunately, the area is just too shallow to make something like this work. And thanks for the comments, Kevin- I'll try and post some more photos this weekend.

Culvert Conservation

More Photoshop foolishness.
It's a Woodland Scenics Item: C1262. I have no idea what I've done to the actual scale; I just matched it to the diameter of your existing pipe. Maybe an actual match would need to be scratch built.

Dave Stewart
President, Society For The Preservation Of This Particular Culvert
 

Plastics have been tested and NS specs for culvert pipes.

http://www.plasticpipe.org/pdf/press-releace-cppa-pipe-performance-under-rr.pdf

http://www.nscorp.com/nscorphtml/pdf/Customers/ID/drainage.pdf

Don't assume that the corrugated pipe would be crushed by the overhead load.  

Tom the scenery looks great and I wouldn't change a thing!  Hope to see more photos of the rest of your layout.

Greg

Material

John,

The bushes in the foreground are Woodland Scenic's poly fiber that I pulled apart until it got thin and wispy. I then sprayed the material with extra hold hairspray and sprinkled on Woodland Scenic's Blended Turf Green Blend. I'd give credit where credit is due for this technique but I can't remember where I read about it. There are also some Woodland Scenics Light Green Folage Clusters in the area. The rest is an assortment of ground foams.

Tom Patterson