I am going to have a spot where runoff water from an industrial complex can collect. What colors should I use to represent this kind of water?
I can play around with mixing craft paints for this small area but where to start? I was thinking of starting with something like graphite and adding some brown and/or dark green.
Rick
If it’s going to be stagnant water you would get a lot of plant growth and then decomposition of organic material. Brown or very dark green would be a good colour to aim for, with plenty of weeds sticking up out of it.
You could hide a rotten egg inside an adjacent building if you want to replicate the smell…
How about glow-in-the-dark purple?
Really, you can use a rainbow of colors, depending on the pollutant. A common pollution color is a somewhat bright orange, like fresh rust.
I did this on a small pond once.
I mixed up Envirotex for the water, and added some used thinner to the area by the runoff pipe after the Envirotex was poured. I streaked the used thinner into the Envirotex with a toothpick.
The used thinner was perfect, but of course, the color was a 100% random sort of purple/brown.
I wish I had a picture, but this was before digital cameras.
You need to keep an eye out for illegal dumping on your layouts!
-Kevin
When I did rainfall and puddles on my Clarence Dock section on my layout, I dripped matt varnish around the area. Then placing thin plastic where puddles were and scattering crushed real coal around (that had been spilled from coal wagons) to give the effect required.
David
I was thinking more along the lines of the rivers around Pittsburgh before they were cleaned up, or the river in Cleveland that caught on fire. I don’t have pictures of those but I am thinking it must have been something like used motor oil.
Rick
I would think the color of runoff depends on a few factors: the industry, location, time period, etc.
I did an image search for “polluted river.” I found just about every color, including purple. Well, sort of purple.
Then placing thin plastic where puddles were
David, your puddles look good, can you explain the thin plastic.
thanks,
Randy
Purple water means hexavalent chromium. So if you have some industry using stuff like zinc chromate primers, or chrome plating things, or even a tannery, some purple water is possible.
–Randy
Hi Randy. I know there are various ways to make puddles. I just copied of P.D. Hancock of ‘Craig and Mertonford’ fame. He wrote his procedure of making puddles in his book .
The thin plastic I use is what we get in a card kit to make windows. Very thin, clear and bendy. Cut a piece to a size slightly larger than required. Glue around the edges and place over the varnish. Once set, cover around the edges with the ground cover you are using.
I covered the edges with tiny pieces of real coal appropriate to the area. You use what is appropriate to your layout.
Although it took two goes to ‘get it right’ (imo), it really is easy to do. If you are doing a ‘after the rainfall’ just paint the roads and pathways with varnish. Some areas will look drier than others. Great! ‘The sun is out, but doesn’t dry everything at once’ look. It certainly is different to a sunny, Summer’s day we all do. [:)]
Hope that helps.
David
The Cuyahoga River has caught on fire more than once. This was one of those things we studied a lot when I was young because it was so unbelievable.
The fire(s) on the Cuyahoga were different from other river fires. In most river fires it is the floating oils on the river that cause a surface fire, and that is pretty common.
What we were taught about the Cuyahoga river is that the flammables were actually dissolved, and not floating on the surface. This made the river actually flammable, the water would catch on fire.
Some reports said this pollution was not readily visible.
To see the Cuyahoga now, it is a National Park, the restoration is amazing.
-Kevin
A few interesting tidbits about the Cuyahoga River fires.
No one really paid much attention to the June 22, 1969 fire that was the focal point of much of the discussion. In fact the press didn’t show up until the fire was out and no photos are known to exist of that incident.
Time magazine ran a feature on polluted rivers and cited the 1969 fire as a cause for action. Since there were no photos of the '69 fire they dug through the files and found a photo of a rather extensive 1952 fire. This is the photo that garnered all the attention. (The same issue also featured a moon landing and a car driven off a bridge)
The 1969 fire was actually triggered by sticking brakes on a Newburgh & South Shore freight, which caught the bridge on fire. Since there was a pile of oil-soaked flotsam at the pilings of the bridge it then appeared the river was on fire.
Some discussion here:
I’ve had the pleasure of riding along on the Cleveland F.D. fireboat Anthony J. Celebreeze on several occasions. I’ll have to dig out those films and get them posted to YouTube… someday [:-^]
This is my effluent runoff from the nearby roundhouse:
RH_Culvert by Edmund, on Flickr
A few dead trees and some tires stuck in the water helps to give the impression of being water which isn’t exactly environmentally friendly.
Cheers, Ed
Years ago, I tried to fill an open top water tank with Woodland Scenics Realistic Water. What I got looked like the nastiest water you could ever imagine. I had painted the inside of the empty tank a dark grey. The WS water seemed to suck the paint color into itself until it was completely opaque. The WS water never completely hardened and any dust or other objects would be absorbed into the muck over time, even years after I made the pour. Shades of the La Brea Tar Pits in California.
In Chicago they use green dye.
This isn’t industrial, but it’s silt and no silt. The upper color is olive drab.
Wanted a brackish look to my industrial area canal, plaster bottom was painted a muddy brown darkening the shade towards the middle. ‘Water’ is Envirotex with some green & brown dye added.
Regards, Peter
This pond is next to my tannery. The colors are acrylics, using rusty base coloring before adding Envirotex.
This is a swamp. Here, it’s greens and browns. For the top layer of Envirotex, I mix and pour it clear but them apply colors to the setting Envirotex with a pin, so the effect is not continuous.
This is the old mill canal. It’s a better example of applying a tiny bit of paint with a pin. Yes, someone tossed a bicycle and a shopping cart in there, too.
To my eye, Peter’s ditch looks spot-on.
Years ago, flying out of the Middle East, we passed over an industry with a collection pond that was neon pink. couldn’t make out what the industry was (not oil). Cotton candy factory, maybe.
Thanks Sean. Hmm, if not cotton candy, maybe a pepto-release.
Regards, Peter