Concrete Culvert - HO Scale

A concrete culvert under an embankment

A culvert is a small structure that nobody notices in a landscape until it is missing. It leads water from a ditch to the other side of an embankment, so that the roadbed is not soaked, and the concrete version belongs among the younger variants: a frame structure with a smooth face appears by lines from the time when concrete became an ordinary building material. On a layout it gives an embankment a meaning and shows that the builder thought about water too.

Dimensions and fitting

The outer dimensions are given as approximately 5.71 cm in width, 3.49 cm in depth and 2.85 cm in height, which corresponds to the HO size. The casting is sunk into a slope so that the face is flush with the terrain around and only a slight projection is left above it. Soil, ballast or grass is then filled in around and the edge between the structure and the landscape disappears.

Painting

• Coloring with liquid scenic pigments is advised.
• Concrete is never white, so a gray base with dirty patches suits.
• The lower edge tends to be darker from permanent damp.
• A lighter dry tone on the upper surfaces separates the structure from the shadow.

The result is worth a few extra minutes of work: a band of moss or grass at the mouth, a dark band where the water really runs and a few chipped edges turn a simple casting into a detail that a visitor stops at. Water does not even have to be in the culvert, as the color and the fall of the terrain take care of the impression. A culvert sunk into a higher embankment looks better still, with a good piece of slope left above it; only then can it be seen that the structure leads water through the roadbed and does not merely lie at its foot.