Hey everyone. I’ve been doing a lot of searching and digging through the forums here trying to get an idea of what paints yield what looks when it comes to painting track. I’ve been looking at a lot of pictures for what I’ll be modeling, which is a kind of generic Glenwood Springs and Tennessee Pass, CO type locale: lush pine/evergreen-covered mountains with rock outcroppings.
anyway, I know I’m going to have to be using a cindery/dark gray ballast, but I’m stumped as to what I should do about painting my track. I haven’t been able to find anygood pictures of what other people have used.
any suggestions? Anyone with similar modeling interests with pictures? Should I just go with grimy black?
I model Rio Grande, and color photos I’ve seen of the track seem to have a black-brown color to them, especially against that darker ballast. I’ve duplicated it to a degree by using Grimy Black and Boxcar Red to paint them–I first spray them with the red, then overspray with the grimy black. Seems to work for me.
Greg: In that era D&RGW ballasted exclusively on the main lines with smelter slag from two sources: Eilers, Colorado, on the Leadville Branch, and Midvale, Utah, junction of the main line and the Bingham Branch. Eilers was the site of American Smelting & Refining Co.'s AV (Arkansas Valley) Smelter, and Midvale the United States Smelting, Refining & Mining Co.'s Midvale Smelter.
The slag from these two smelters is visually indistinguishable, and is a dark purplish-black rock. It’s easy to pick up samples from Leadville. “Black” is not the color; it has definite purple-red tones showing. If I were modeling again, I think I would go load up on samples and find some way to have it crushed to size, and be 100% accurate. It’s very high in iron content, so it has magnetic properties. It would be possible to crush it with a sledge and screen to size, which would be a lot of exercise, because it’s very hard.
The Moffat Road in that era still had some of the original Moffat scoria ballast showing, which comes in two colors, black and red – the red is very similar to a brick-red color. Scoria is popular as a landscaping cover and you can see what it looks like at many lawn-and-garden stores or nurseries that sell rock. In many places on the Moffat you can see the old scoria peeking out at the base of the ballast shoulder, especially on embankments where the material is sloughing down the side of the embankment. Similarly on the “Rio Grande proper” main line, cinder ballast, pit run, and native materials often show at the edge of the ballast shoulder.
Most branch lines were still ballasted with the same native material as the embankment on which the track rested, or used washed river rock, or pit-run rock, from some local source. These so-called “ballasts” (they’re very poor – but cheap) are highly variable in color and generally are not in th