I don’t know Joe, not many of us live near a beach. And even if we did, is the grain size right for a model RR? I find often grain size of sand can be too coarse in some cases. Some use sand to create dirt/gravel roads in HO and more often than not, it looks very coarse - if you were to shrink down to that size it would be a rough ride I would guess.
DRGWGJCO, I can’t take credit for the sage brush technique - I learned it from Rob Spangler who used it on his wp8thsub layout which is eastern Utah if I remember correctly.
One of the things I found to replicate some of the sage brush was the color ground foam which was from a company I had to order it from - the bluish gray was Eucalyptus I believe. The name of the company escapes me right now.
Yes, in most cases saguaro cacti really don’t belong on HO layouts if we are being totally correct. There are actually very limited portions of desert that were traversed by Southern Pacific and Santa Fe that actually had saguaro cacti in noticeable numbers. On Santa Fe, the lines northwest of Phoenix did have a few saguaros–but that is not anywhere on the Transcon. On SP–sure, near Tucson there were/are saguaros in numbers. I’ve purchased a dvd of the UP/SP near Tucson and don’t remember the dvd showing any saguaros at all. Guess I’ll have to scour it again.
Also Joshua Trees have limited applications in HO, but some people love them and just have to have them.
It’s my railroad, and so if I wanted saguaros, I’d have them…I did for awhile have a few, but then removed them (they were off scale for HO and that bothered me). Now more nearly HO scale saguaros are available…
John
Colors and textures of sand vary greatly. Most of the sand I use for ground cover and ballast is from a location a couple hundred miles from where I live, but it’s worth the drive. I can get several different related colors and textures from roughly the same spot. They work better for what I’m modeling that what I can find locally.
In some cases, what’s sold for sandboxes, paver base, or whatever is also useful. Depending on the source, it may work better than what you can dig up locally as well.
You can try it, but you will probably have to sift it, bake it, and pass a magnet ovrt it. For me, I sift paver sand, and never had a problem…
I don’t have a good “out in the wild” source of desert sand in northern Virginia and I am a l-o-n-g way from any desert - 3 days drive probably.
Some modelers turned me on to Polyblend Sanded Grout, used in tile grout application. It can be found in bags at Home Depot and comes in a a variety of scenery friendly earth tones.
I used a light sand colored textured grout as a desert ground base - the sand is pretty fine which IMO works pretty well in HO.
