Can Sand be used for gravel?

[yougottawanta]

Depending on how much sand You use I too would recommend using a product to lock the material in place. To understand what I am stating you need to understand the process sand is manufactured by. The sand once crushed ,or dug up. It is then passed thru multiple sieves with each sieve letting progressively smaller grains pass thru. With that said some very fine material gets thru into every mixture.This will be a danger to any rolling stock or locomative you are running on your layout.The "fines will act as sand paper on any moving part. Again recommend gluing or whatever method you use to lock in the “fines”.

[Harley-Davidson]

I used and old ballast in my layout during 20 years, loose, not glued because I don´t like as it looks. All was OK, up to my purchase of a Tower55 loco; it has the speaker inside the fuel tank, downward, close to the rails, and picked up the ballast: after so many years, I´ve noticed now that the ballast was magnetic. I´ve removed all, and I´ll put some known ballast.

[river_eagle]

for this N scale gravel road, Aluminum oxide sand blasting sand is what I used.

river_eagle, I examined your posted photograph - I will comment here that it is a fine photograph, good lighting with an absolute minimum of glare and a high saturation of color; your camera position has rendered good composition and your model scene reflects the same thing; one suggestion, however; your depth of field could be improved with a tripod and the slowest shutter speed/smallest aperture you can get; I do not own a digital camera so I’m not exactly sure just how those factors work in the digital environment - anyway, I examined your photograph and my gaze fell on the “gravel” at trackside and I said “Now that looks like gravel”; it was then that I read the caption.

this isn’t my best pic, it shows the road well, but was cropped from a much larger pic, to hilite the road, regular image is much clearer, we’re almost into pixelation mode. original pic is 3.2 meg f8.2 shot on tripod with timer delay for shutter.

http://s46.photobucket.com/albums/f123/river_eagle/N-Scale/Turbine/

[quote]

I, too, am an N Scaler and it can be very difficult rendering a 160:1 - or 1:160 if you prefer - reduction in some things; I have had many (positive) comments about my scenery but I have torn out much Hydrocal® in my life trying to attain that magical “illusion” which we strive so hard to master in model railroading. I have never thought of using sand-blasting sand simulating gravel. I do know that this stuff is very, very fine and, for safety purposes, it is advised that