THE RIVER

[PRR8259]

It is hard for practicing engineers on model forums I think, because we want to be helpful, in not too many words, and we sometimes try to explain concepts that are just not "easy"...subcritical versus supercritical flow--that's half of a college fluid mechanics class right there.  I found that challenging and drifted more toward 3D geometry...

I love the model pictures above.  I lack the time and patience to do that on my current layout.  Maybe once the kids are gone, and I find the next, smaller, house (a ranch with full basement and walkout glass doors to allow access from outside once some of us can't handle steps) I can try that.

John

[ROBERT PETRICK]

I stand squarely with PRR8259 on this, both philosophically and technically. But just for fun I'm gonna cloud the water, so to speak, a little more.

Flowing water exhibits two nominal characteristics: sub-critical and super-critical. In sub-critical flow, the surface of the water is flatter than the river bottom; and in super-critical flow, the surface is steeper than the bottom. Super-critical flow causes the water to accelerate and stretch itself out until the surface tension breaks and the mass falls apart (whitewater), or until it encounters flatter water and creates a hydraulic jump (ripples, waves, eddies, and so forth). Along with this activity, and for other reasons as well, the physical shape of the river bottom is eroded into a series of riffles, runs, pools, and glides. All this is an oversimplification, of course, but this is a model railroading forum and not a hydraulics classroom or a fly-fishing training camp, philosophy notwithstanding.

Now, back to modelling. That structure ain't gonna scratch-build itself.

Robert 

[snjroy]

I'm not an engineer, but I live in Eastern Canada where there are tons of lakes and rivers. From what I have seen, all rivers involve slopes since there is "current" - otherwise they would be lakes or oceans. But slopes are not all the same simply because terrain is irregular. The slope will impact the surface of the water, going from an almost flat looking surface (when no wind is present), to something like the Niagara falls. Between these two extremes, water is more or less irregular in appearance, depending on the slope. What also affects the surface is the depth of the river, the quantity (flow rate) and what is under it: rocks under a thin surface will create rapids. Colors also change because of the mixed air content that increases with the slope... Water is such a cool thing but so hard to model...

Simon

[gmpullman]

USGS topographic maps have been one of the best resources to study railroad and waterway grades for more than a hundred years.

https://www.usgs.gov/products/maps/topo-maps

Here's a tiny corner of a map including Horseshoe Curve. Lots of information concerning land use and waterways, including elevations are available for free download at USGS.

 Hollidaysburg, PA, 1:24,000 quad, 1963, USGS by Edmund, on Flickr

Each thin brown line represents a change of twenty feet of elevation, heavier line is 100 feet.

Which river or geographic location are you looking for?

Good Luck, Ed

 

[Track fiddler]

Wayne

I couldn't find it but somewhere along the line you said you thought posting all your pictures was unappropriate.

You thought wrong.  Everytime I see pictures of your work I admire them.

You just leave your pictures here and I will continue to admire them

 

TF

 

If you look up River in the dictionary   I think the pictures of your work should be there

[Track fiddler]

PRR8259

Track Fiddler--

I'm sorry; I don't remember the post, but I was offering an opinion only.

John

 

 

 

John,  I am a man of karma.  Your apology is very much accepted.  I have to apologize too.  I was a little blunt that night.  

We are all good here.

 

TF

 

Friends

[doctorwayne]

hon30critter

That's not quite true here in Canada. Both spellings are acceptable.

Not as far as I'm concerned! 
I'm also getting fed up with Canadian newspapers and magazines, along with on-line posters that are too lazy to choose their preferred language, simply accepting a U.S.-based spell check. 
I mean, really, they can't even pronounce zed, then put zees everywhere where an ess is perfectly serviceable.  All in an attempt to make it rhyme in the A-B-C song, I guess.  Ha-rumpf!! 

richhotrain

I have to say that, after reading all of the replies to this thread, I have no idea what this thread is all about....

I gotta agree with you on that, Rich, and I probably should remove the pictures from my earlier post....they seem inappropriate to the conversation.

Wayne

[mbinsewi]

richhotrain

I have to say that, after reading all of the replies to this thread, I have no idea what this thread is all about.

Yea, really. Just one of TF's "philosophical moments"   

We all understand that water runs down hill.  Watch a floating leaf drift by, or toss a fishing line with a bobber in a river, even though it can look like still water,  and you'll get what's happening.

I think as modelers, we depict river "grades" with water falls and rapids, to give the feel, or illusion of running down hill, even if the surface we started with is level.

Mike.

[richhotrain]

I have to say that, after reading all of the replies to this thread, I have no idea what this thread is all about.  

It seems to me that the original point of this thread was that river beds are not all level. OK, granted, but thanks to gravity (or whatever) the water surface appears level most of the time. So, what is a modeler to do other than to make the river bed level and depict the water surface in the same way?

Rich

[PRR8259]

Ray--

What I was trying to say, and perhaps oversimplified, is that I have attended training sessions (for those darned professional development hours we are required by law to obtain) where the professionals doing the training were saying that our realigning the channels in the past caused greatly accelerated erosion or sometimes deposition to occur.  So some professionals (not familiar with those you cited) seem to believe that the "natural" courses were much more stable than the ones we have altered (also because when we moved the streams and rivers, we changed the channel linings and the grades and thereby altered the friction forces).  So yes, for a lot of money, some claim to be able to "restore" the stream channels.

I'm not sure I buy it either, but their slide presentation looked good.

And yes, I am the roadway guy who sometimes has to figure out where/how much rock to place to protect the abutments.

Thank you for your correction/better explanation.

I'm a hardcore geometry guy: my job is to figure out how things can be made to fit, and then complete the 3D model.  We are just a few years from complete 3D deliverables to the DOT, in lieu of traditional paper or .pdf plan sets.  So I've been "the roadway guy" or the "3D guy" for 15 years now almost exclusively, with various firms.  The limiting factor is doing the bridges and walls in 3D; most currently practicing bridge engineers do not appreciate change, but it's coming anyway--as soon as the local DOT decides "when" and then they will be behind the learning curve.

In defense of the bridge guys, doing the roadway in 3D is easier, and you don't have to be quite as precise.  If the constructed road is off an inch or two here or there, nobody cares...as long as the water gets to the storm inlets without ponding on the road.

John

[hon30critter]

PRR8259

I don't doubt that there were merits to realigning rivers as you have cited.  The problem is all the unintended, and sometimes irreversible consequences.

I wonder how many people know about the damage done to many rivers by hunting wolves almost to extinction? Yes, that's right. Killing wolves has messed up many rivers.

How? No wolves equals lots more deer. The deer need food, and the trees along the river banks are very attractive, especially since they can now feed in the open because there are no wolves. The wolves used to force the deer to hide in the bush away from the rivers. Now the deer can denude the river banks, which makes them unstable and subject to erosion. That silts up the rivers and the spawning grounds. No spawning grounds equals no fish. Get the picture?

This is not my own pet theory. The effect of decimating wolf populations has been well documented. Fortunately, Mother Nature has been very forgiving in this case. Where the wolves have been allowed to repopulate their original territories, the rivers and the fish populations have apparently recovered, or so I am told.

Dave

[Colorado Ray]

PRR8259

 

Great effort has been expended to improve hydraulic models, and we learned that natural channels reach a "homeostasis" where their banks, grades, sandbars, etc. become stable and don't move around much, and erosion is minimized.  Then mankind's grading operations, in many cases, disrupted the natural channels and made erosion and deposition a whole lot worse.  Through careful study, some of them are being restored.  We are much better about sustainable development now.

 

 

 

John, I'm also a professional civil engineer by education and years of consulting practice, and for several years managed a team of water resource engineers specializing in river restoration.

i take issue with your comment that natural systems become stable.  In fact, they are quite dynamic.  in their natural state meandering streams and rivers will migrate upstream within the geologic constraints of their flood plains.  That's how oxbow lakes, etc. are created.  Look at most any stream or river in Google Earth and you will see the evidence of historic channels.

The problem comes when we place a "permanent", hence static, structure like a bridge in this dynamic natural environment.  The river wants to continue its historic migration (albeit possibly accelerated by our man made changes to the watershed) and we don't want our bridge to fail.  Something has to give.  The key to successful river restoration is to allow the river to dissipate its energy without destroying our bridge.  Ideally we can do this with emphasis on sustainable quasi-natural methods,  but only to a certain extent.  We often have to resort to "hard" protective measures for valuable structures.

i became dissallusioned with river restoration when Rosgen methods came in vogue and scientific geomorphology took a backseat.  I moved to the "dark side" and switched to industrial, mining and mechanical engineering.

Ray

[PRR8259]

Track Fiddler--

I'm sorry; I don't remember the post, but I was offering an opinion only.

Your layout is yours to do what you want with.

I might have pointed out that certain things are not possible in the prototype.  Though there is a saying "there is a prototype for everything", in structural design, where if it fails somebody may die, they try really really hard to avoid "unusual structural details".

If somebody wants a fictitious bridge or whatever on their layout, I really don't care--it is their bridge.

However there are general tendencies in construction (and some pretty fine books on prototypical modeling of bridges).

Some people want to horizontally curve truss bridges.  The whole point of a truss bridge is that they are very rigid structures.  Only even certain members (depending upon truss configuration) can take compression forces.  Curves were dealt with by building bridges overly wide--to allow the track to actually curve on a horizontally straight bridge--or by sometimes actually varying the alignment of each truss span a little bit (a few degrees).  I don't design truss bridges, but there are practical limitations as to how many degrees each span of a big multi-span truss can be "kinked".  This would directly correlate to the average design axle loading and spacing between those axles, and the position of that load relative to the end cross beams of the truss bridge--and what can physically be built--riveted together to work in real life.

Almost nobody builds truss bridges today, though for certain railroad applications they would still be considered an "ideal" structure type (for certain span lengths, and for swing bridges).  So, yeah, a precious few have been built new.  One is in Montoursville, PA, not far from Bowser, where a former Reading bridge was washed out by a tropical storm (that actually made it to PA).

One can easily find overly wide deck girder bridges on curves that allow the track to curve on the structure.

Also, depending upon bridge type--some of them cannot have a vertical curve on the bridge.  But yes, minor "kinks" can be done.

It's your railroad, your bridge, and your river or stream to cross (ha, now back to topic).

John

 

[hon30critter]

Doughless

Because we are model ing.  Not model ling.

That's not quite true here in Canada. Both spellings are acceptable.

Dave

[PRR8259]

richhotrain

 

 

PRR8259

No, they are NOT all the same.

My business is civil engineering design.  There are so many factors involved.  Today others in my profession are attempting to restore river and stream channels to their former "natural" condition (before my predecessors mucked them up by altering them in the name of progress).  

 

 

 

 

Sometimes, altering the flow of a river has beneficial effects as in the case of the South Branch of the Chicago River. Prior to 1929, it looked like this.

 

After the engineers straightened the river to greatly improve commerce, it looked like this.

The straightening of the South Branch of the Chicago River had a huge positive effect on rail transportation into Chicago. So, altering the former natural flow of a river does not always have a negative effect.

Rich

 

 

Rich--I don't doubt that there were merits to realigning rivers as you have cited.  The problem is all the unintended, and sometimes irreversible consequences.  Today, that river re-alignment shown in those photos would NEVER happen.  Too many government agencies would simply deny the alternative.  We (today) have to prove there is "no other reasonable and prudent alternative" before we could do that, and the applicable laws are NOT on the engineer/designer's side, period.  Those laws were enacted due to the environmental problems created by past designers, or for one example, strip mining companies that just left the land forms utterly destroyed, without any plantings or "reclamation" at all.  There are so many other examples.  We today simply cannot get away with doing what was done before.  The Army Corps of Engineers would never approve that river realignment today, whether it had "merit" or not--and by law they are required to sign off for it to happen.

There is even a book called "The Big Roads" whose author states that the urban blight we have today in cities like Baltimore is directly the result of very poor civil engineering and urban planning, because my predecessors built a depressed freeway through parts of Baltimore (Route 40) and in the process destroyed entire neighborhoods (severing their connections with each other).  Forget about what recent politicians have or have not done, the author blames the Interstate Highway engineers of years ago for the urban blight we have now--not the politicians.  

It's all a very sobering lesson for those of us working as civil engineers today.  It's so much more than drawing pretty lines and 3D models in cadd; we have to consider the ramifications of all the options.  A good engineer will treat your property as if it was their own.

John

[York1]

Doughless

Because we are model ing.  Not model ling.

 

 

But then I'm run ing, not run ning.

 

I know, I'm not very funny.  My wife agrees.

 

[MisterBeasley]

I use Envirotex Lite for my waterways, but that presents problems with a sloping river, because the resin seeks its own level and will flow downhill.  On the couple of places I have done this, I solved the problem by damming up small rock sections and actually pouring the resin in terraces, letting me still get slope to the overall scene while keeping the Envirotex flat.

[Doughless]

Because we are model ing.  Not model ling.

[SeeYou190]

York1

On a whole different subject -- the word "modeling" looked correct to me, but I didn't know if the final "l" should be doubled. I found that in the U.S. only, one "l" is used, while in English usage everywhere else in the world, the "l" is doubled. Why?... I guess no one knows.

.

I read a lot of history books published in England. As a result, I need to be careful at work when typing words like colour, shoppe, etc. I am usually unaware that English spellings or phrases creep into my writings.

.

-Kevin

.

[York1]

Wayne, wonderful looking layout!  You have done a great job modeling the rivers and bridges.

 

(On a whole different subject -- the word "modeling" looked correct to me, but I didn't know if the final "l" should be doubled.  I found that in the U.S. only, one "l" is used, while in English usage everywhere else in the world, the "l" is doubled.  Why?... I guess no one knows.)

[doctorwayne]

Track fiddler

....What is the grade of a river?....

For modelling purposes, I'd guess it to be whatever we wish to make it.

However, unless I were modelling a waterfall or an extremely fast-running water course, my rivers are pretty-much level. 
For those using resin-type products for replicating water, it's a pretty safe bet that those rivers are level, too, as the product is considered self-levelling.  If a person using such products wanted the water to appear to be flowing downhill, I suppose they could pour it level on a separate "riverbed", then install it on the layout at an appropriate slope. 

All of my rivers are, as far as I'm aware, level or at least level-ish.  However, I use Durabond 90 patching plaster for my "water", and don't make it watery-enough that it self-levels, so it's at whatever "level" the drywall knife left it....

Here's the same river, as it might look to someone in a small boat on the river....the scene is meant to portray the river where it empties into Lake Erie, and is, I think, pretty-much what I've seen where the Grand River, in southern Ontario, empties into Lake Erie....

 

However, I've decided that my river is the Maitland River (the real one empties into Lake Huron), but on my railroad, it's flowing into Lake Erie.

This photo pretty much kills any thought that there's a lake of any sort, though (All aerial photos courtesy of Secord Air Services)...

Just to give you an idea of how deep the river is, here's a look before the "water" filled the channel...

Not too far from that scene, I attempted to model an inlet of Lake Erie...

...but the scene is both too shallow and too close to the viewer to be convincing.  Here's a view from above ...

This is Chippawa Creek (named for a real one, but looking nothing like it)....

...and despite the "white water", as far as I'm aware, it's pretty-much level.
Here's another view....

Locals claim that there's a waterfall, just out of view to the left (below), but I can assure you, none can be seen (which saved a lot of work)...

This is Negro Creek, also named for a real creek, and likely a reasonable portrayal of part of that prototype....

Like the real one, as seen from the real Hwy. 6, which passes over it, LPBs in a passenger car likely don't even notice it, hidden by overhanging foliage, and viewed (or not) from a solid deck bridge, giving no aural indication of its presence.

There's one more river to be "filled" (it's already been crossed twice) and that's the long delayed Speed River....

Also based on a real river, I haven't decide if it will be white water or a more sedate version.  All of the surrounding "mountains" will be covered in trees, hopefully making them less mountainous and more hill-like. 

Here's a view from the other side of the tracks...

To answer your question TF, for me there is no appreciable grade...no need for it or the work it could entail.

Wayne

 

[kasskaboose]

This post is confusing.  Are we talking about songs with a river theme?  What about the engineering of tracks near rivers?  Either way, I like having a river on a layout and think the engineering aspects is fascinating. 

I plan on having a river on my layout--part of the Roanoke River. 

[BroadwayLion]

Getting back to the river.... The Hudson River is as straight as an arrow (as far as rivers go) and hasn't changes dince the last ice age.

 

Now that is the interesting thing... It used to cut across Long Island from Flushing to the Rockaways, but ice dams stoppered it up, and so now it has forged its new route.

Look uo "Hudson Canyon" on the internet and you will see one of the nations largest and deepest canyons, all under the Atlantic Ocean. You can see that it floowed the old route longer than it has the present route. And it is still cutting the trench. Polution fronm upstate will flow through the bottom of that canyon until it flattens out in the deeps of the ocean. 

I think that it has more power than the Mississippi which is big but slow.

 

ROAR

[York1]

Each year I took a group of students canoeing and camping on the Niobrara River across northern Nebraska.

In about a 25 mile stretch, the river drops over 550 feet.  While that wouldn't be much in mountainous areas, in our neck of the woods, it makes for fun canoeing on rapids.

Much of the drop happens in a set of rapids, while between the rapids are long stretches of very slow moving water.

Just rough enough to be exciting, but easy enough to be safe and fun.

[Overmod]

"Respectfully submitted" is often a figure of speech, the sort of thing like 'how do you do' in greeting or 'sincerely yours' at the close of a letter.  You find it fairly often in things like committee reports, minutes following Robert's Rules of Order ... things like that where it becomes rightly or wrongly a formality.

I doubt he meant it as condescension; in fact, I read it more the other way, as a bit of self-effacement after providing so much technical information.  We are all friends here -- or should be.

[Track fiddler]

hon30critter

 

 

Track fiddler

Respectfully take your respectfully somewhere else, .... we're all full up here.  

 

 

TF, I hope you retract that comment. I don't think that it is in keeping with the spirit of the forums.

Dave

 

 

Yep  you are exactly right.  I retract. 

I guess I just got a little ornery before bed last night.  I just remember John telling me I couldn't build a bridge prototypically the way I needed to build one at one time.

Poor choice of words on my part in my late night Rebellion  I must have had an underlying vengeance within me.  Yes a little ashamed here.

For what it's worth,  I'm sorry.

 

 

TF

[tstage]

Track fiddler

That's why I posted, ...... Comments or thoughts.

Having acid reflux from the 60s???

[richhotrain]

PRR8259

No, they are NOT all the same.

My business is civil engineering design.  There are so many factors involved.  Today others in my profession are attempting to restore river and stream channels to their former "natural" condition (before my predecessors mucked them up by altering them in the name of progress).  

 

Sometimes, altering the flow of a river has beneficial effects as in the case of the South Branch of the Chicago River. Prior to 1929, it looked like this.

After the engineers straightened the river to greatly improve commerce, it looked like this.

The straightening of the South Branch of the Chicago River had a huge positive effect on rail transportation into Chicago. So, altering the former natural flow of a river does not always have a negative effect.

Rich

[richhotrain]

Well, now, looks like we got a real barn burner brewing here. 

The most famous of all civil engineers, Dr. Garth Brooks once remarked,

You know a dream is like a river

Ever changin' as it flows

And a dreamer's just a vessel

That must follow where it goes

Trying to learn from what's behind you

And never knowing what's in store

Makes each day a constant battle

Just to stay between the shores

Rich