I will soon be at the ballasting stage on my HO layout, and got to wondering about the process…
On previous layouts I have done the “diluted white glue dribbled down the tracks” to secure the ballast. The last layout was in place for 13 years, and I never had a problem (ballast wise) unless I wanted to remove or somehow alter track.
But now I’m thinking, is gluing it down really necessary? I’m the lone operator of the layout, and I lay ballast so its level or below the ties (shouldn’t get in the locos innards), and don’t lay ballast near the working parts of turnouts.
So my question is, what are your thoughts on the gluing of ballast? Yea, or Nay, or “whatever”???
The choices are essentially Elmer’s Glue or matte medium.
Years ago, the LHS guy recommended matte medium to me. Said it was quieter and softer, less brittle. Truth is, matte medium is 4 times as expensive as white glue and you need rubbing alcohol to remove it.
Track without ballast is very quiet. Track with unglued ballast is still pretty quiet. Gluing the track, white glue or matte medium, makes it noisy, drum like.
I am really tempted on my next layout not to glue the ballast. If it gets messed up by derailments or my fingers, just re-groom it. At worst, vacuum it up and re-lay it. You can buy a small portable vacuum to isolate ballast from general household dust and dirt. Not that big a deal to re-groom with small brushes.
Less noise, no gluing and the resulting mess, track is totally re-usable.
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While I have used matte medium on my current layout, I vote for no glue at all.
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IMHO, that´s not a question at all. There is no alternative to gluing the ballast. Even with closed gear boxes, locos act like a vacuum cleaner, and fine ballast will do no good to a gear box. Guess how I got to know this!
In my opinion, this is a very bad decision. Ballast may contribute to the overall sound of a layout when glued but on my layouts I have never had this problem. Some things to consider if you are not going to secure your ballast:
1.) It will get messed up from time to time due to derailments and just working on the layout. You said you don’t mind fixing it, so that is okay.
2.) It will get messed up everytime you clean the rails, which you may have to do more as ballast contains stone dust which will make the tracks “dusty” when you apply the ballast, or move it. And you better not bump the ballast with your bright boy or it will scatter.
3.) When it scatters and gets into your scenery , it is not always easy to vacuum up. It gets caught in the ground foam and bushes and sticks out like a sore thumb.
4.) If you use real stone and it contains magnetic particles, they will get attracted to your engine’s motors and cause damage.
5.) You will want to clean your layout from time to time. Having loose ballast will make that more difficult.
6.) The loose particles may wind up in your track switches, causing problems with the point rails’ movement.
Woodland Scenics ballast, which has been reported to be made from walnut shells, is very light. As your trains run around the layout, they vibrate, and that will tend to shake the track and roadbed just a bit. Slowly, your ballast will migrated downhill, leaving the shoulders of the roadbed to settle below. So, if you don’t want to be “maintaining” the ballast periodically, it’s better to glue it in place and not worry about it.
Now, how many times have you hit your head or shoulder on the underside of your layout? Think of it like an earthquake. One good solid hit is going to shift a lot of ballast, and after you stop the blood from leaving your noggin, you’ll be rearranging that ballast for hours.
Unglued ballast is a mess waiting to happen. It moves around anytime you - bump into the benchwork, clean the track, rerail a car, mis-aim an uncoupling pick, sneeze, etc. It only looks truly good the first moments after it’s applied.
+2, Besides all the advantages mentioned, once you have tweaked the trackwork and are quite satisfied w/ the operation, glued ballast will help to keep it that way. Try to pick out debris and clean a layer of dust off loose ballast!
In some situations, on sidings yards etc, where ballast spills may occur, I might see that loose ballast may work. This way the scene can be altered if wanted. Of coarse the loose ballast (spill), would be done on existing glued work. The same is true for sand around a sanding tower/ facility, and coal for a coal dock.
Principally for the reason of keeping the rails where I last put 'em…that’s the reason I glue the ballast. I use yellow glue which softens nicely after a couple of minutes with a dilute water and alcohol mixture soaking. As stated by others, once you have groomed it, it becomes a forgettable item if you then glue it. You can vacuum it, cover it with snow and vacuum it later (as I have done), cover it with cinders and later vacuum it, and suffer the indignity of derailments without danger to the nice brushwork you undertook to give it that picture-perfect grooming.
On my last layout, I used MDF spline roadbed, and I glued the not-very-deep ballast lightly after I caulked the flextrack to the spline tops. I found it to be very quiet.
So I’d guess that you wouldn’t glue the ground cover in place either? [:-^]
I don’t know what the environment in the area of your layout is like, but I’ve seen an awful lot where there are open joists overhead, table saws or drill presses nearby, all sorts on non-train-related items under, over, and around the layout, and even automobiles parked alongside. Layouts get dirty and every time you need to clean yours, you will most likely have a renewed opportunity to practise your ballasting and ground cover application techniques. [swg]
One of the reasons that I don’t have to clean track is because I use my shop vac to clean both the room, and the layout itself. Dust and cobwebs are gone, the ballast isn’t.
As an experiment, I ballasted two lengths of track in the netherworld. Both were tangent, one was glued, the other wasn’t. Both are on 2% grades.
The ballast that got the diluted white glue treatment is still where I put it.
The unglued ballast has migrated outward and downgrade, adversely influenced by every passing train. If it was where the sun was intended to shine I would reballast the track, apply white glue, then vacuum up the rest. It will probably disappear when I vacuum the roadbed (of the entire layout) next month.
When you do the matte medium experiment, make a sound comparison between unglued ballast, glued ballast with white glue, and glued ballast with matte medium. I am curious what you perceive as the diffference among the three alternatives. Which is the most quiet and which makes the most noise?