Hello Fellow G-scale F-scale 1:20 1:22 1:24 1:25 1:29 1:32 Friends!
Let me introduce myself a little…I have been hanging out mostly in the model railroader magazine forum because I model indoors. I model what is supposedly 1:24 scale but I have an addiction to Bachmann shays which are gigantic and I also love the Aristo-Craft heavyweights and USA Trains PA diesels which are 1:29 and I think even 1:32, all of which means I suffer from the “G” scale syndrome. What can you do? Ha!
However, I really do try to keep structures and scenery and everything else I can including figures and cars at 1:24. I use mostly Gargraves hollow aluminum flextrack because the scale is more attractive to me than the usual g-scale brass and nickel-plated track which I use in less noticeable places on the layout (and I haven’t gotten up the nerve to hand-lay any nickel-plated 225 track yet, although that’s in my future!), and being indoors I don’t have to worry about people stepping on the hollow track and the effects of sun and snow and other weather and all that. (I haven’t figured out how to get the look of tieplates on Gargraves track, but that’s another story.)
Now then…ballast! In the past, before I overcame my fear and rather snobbish attitude toward computers and joining a forum, I did a search of this forum for ballast and read that granite chicken grit is a possibility. Like others have related, I also got the blank stares and the head-scratching when I asked around. Everyone who supplied such things wanted to sell me crushed sea or oyster shells, which I tried but which, to me, doesn’t look too good for ballast. I live in a town of two million people in the middle of the mountains and all kinds of farming land and yet found only ONE place that carries granite chicken grit, but I found it. Just shows you what a little persis