A great photograph. The textures in the gravel and the wood of the train tracks is extraordinary. You’ve composed the image with precision. I can see that the top wall of the photograph is very straight with the metal part of the railroad track. Not only that, but the bottom frame and the side walls are also very neat and clear of any clutter.
The composition and simplicity of this image is great. It is what we asked for, but what I would like to see you try and accomplish in future assignments is to focus on larger areas. The idea is to try and break away from the safety of close up images. It’s much more complicated to organize chaos on a larger scale. You’ll need to consider things like shapes, lines, areas of focus, the way an assortment of colors communicate with each other and so on.
Most importantly it gets you thinking about your positioning. When you are not focused in on something close then you need to put considerable thought on your placement as a photographer. Just finding the right place to take the picture from can take 30 minutes or so.
That all being said, the image you’ve submitted is not wrong. However, for future assignments, try pulling your camera back a little further and incorporating large scenes into your shots. Use strong primary elements, depth and all of the technical organization components that you would in a more close up setting, but try to apply it to a larger scene.
Another note I would like to make on your image is that I want you to start thinking about gamma and contrast. Look at the following link for example
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GammaCorrection_demo.jpg
There is no 1 right way to edit your gamma settings or contrast settings, but often audiences like to see depth and major differences between the light and dark components of a photograph. Editing your gamma or contrast can help you with this.
I bring this up because I feel that the cracks in the wood and the texture of your highly textured photograph would really pop out if you pushed the dark areas out of the mid-tonal ranges and into the blacks.
I hope this helps.