Laying ballast - dark brown - so dark that I decided to lighten color with a wash of grey/tan paint. Thought I would try some limestone dust also to lighten. I decided I would prefer a lighter ballast color for the bulk of the layout and want to transition. One transition would be in a tunnel - so no problem there. The other under a double plate bridge.
Does anyone have multiple ballast colors and how did you handle transitions? Any secrets?
Thanks!
On my last layout, I had two widely disparate colours of ballast. I made the change at the diverging route of a turnout leading into the station spur. I was never really that happy with the look, but I got used to it. Ideally, your change would take place in one of two ways, as far as I would know. Do a bit of a mix over two inches anywhere on your layout, and call that a transition, or have the two colours separated by a bridge, say on opposite sides of a river, maybe even of a roadway.
I’ve seen it on the prototype and it just abruptly changes.
In the case I’m thinking of it went from a rust-tinted dark slag ballast to a white-gravel ballast.
Problem is, such an abrupt change would probably look aesthetically awful on a layout.
I have light grey ballast on the main, tan ballast on the passing, station, and spur tracks, and cinders for the yard. Where they meet, I just blend them together for a few feet and it seems to look OK. Real railroads do make abrupt color transistions when they are either laying new ballast or just run out out of one type in the middle of a job. If you do a little mixing between the transitions, it looks pretty natural.
I go from black ballast in the subways to light gray ballast on the surface. I made up a 50/50 mix and used that for about 6 inches as I made the transition.
First thing to do is a search for all the posts I’ve done on ballast and then spend a day or two reading them. [:-,]
Distinct colours can be explained from the prototype and following their practice you can model it in a way that can look right.
First issue will always be what era you are working in. Can we assume that you are modelling a Class 1 road?
Early eras the RRs tended to get their ballast as locally as possible… they didn’t always get good material… and learnt the hard/expensive way.
Step by step, depending on where the RR was and how well it was doing both locally and overall (if it was a big road) a RR could prosper and maintain high quality track or slide with resulting “defered maintenance”. Some RRs did one then the other in cycles.
The two above situations could make various combinations.
You will need to decide which ballast colourhas been there the longer and at least one reason for the difference between materials.
As you have the dark stuff laid first it will probably be less work to say that this is the older ballast. The question is then whether the ballast is darker because it is a different material (from a different source/quarry), because it hasn’t been kept paricularly clean… which is low if not poor maintenance, because it is old ballast… that has had a long time to get dirty, it has been made darker by some local condition… such as soot from factories OR any combiantion of these.
Why do you need this information?
Because 1. you want your layout to look good and 2. deciding these things will help you achieve that.
Obviously it is quite simple to decide that the lighter ballast is coming from a different source. Why has the RR changed supply? is it hauling it from further away… if so, how come it can afford the higher cost? It may be that the RR has been bought or merged and the new material is coming from the regular supply of
… and I didn’t even mention ties… [:-,]
Meanwhile, back at the OP…
A really sharp change can occur where two companies (or two Divisions of one company) meet. This can have been made out-of-date by history… where mergers or buy-outs have happened.
Part of getting the look right will be the over-all weathering. How uniform, or not, this is will depend on how long it is supposed to be since the last changes occured.
[8D]
PS
You wouldn’t normally change ballasting under a bridge… because you don’t want any sudden changes in track condition / train ride under (or on) a bridge.
Similarly track maintemance would tend to run clear though any tunnel in one hit… obviously except for the very long tunnels that would need several hits.
The tunnel should be less of an issue for you… I imagine that you will only look at one end at a time.
Rather than try to hide a “JOIN” under a bridge I would look at some of the ideas I’ve waffled on about before…
[8D]