I’ve started to paint the Rock River bridge components and base for the river. I painted the bridge decking and shoes a dark brown and will be applying rust via Pan Pastels. Below are some images of the progress.

Here is a closeup of the bridge shoes. I’m very happy with how the pastels recreate rust and dirt.
Here you can see the before-and-after between the brown base paint (on the right) and after applying pastel “rust” (on the left).
The abutments and pier will be scratch coated with spackle compound so that I can create chips and cracks. After the distressing, weathering will be applied to give them an aged concrete look. I’ll also be mapping out the river bed and start the painting process. I’ll be trying to achieve a brown/green look to the water in the foreground that will transition to reflective blue — just like one would see as they look off into the distance with the sky reflecting on the water. The blue transition will hopefully blend in well with the backdrop colors as well.
Another view of the same area.
I painted the bridge ties a medium gray. Once they are weathered they’ll look more realistic. You may notice that there are two different styles of bridge ties shown. The 4-spike ties were made by Micro Engineering and the 2-spike ties by Central Valley. I had them available to use, and even though they don’t match it will make for an interesting variation.