Wondering through Home Depot, playground sand caught my eye. I’ve used to built up the area to be ballasted - But can it be colored and dried then sifted to match Woodland Scenics ballast? - Especially N scale? - Playground sand for a 25 pounds bag is 2.99 - One bag of WS ballast 3.50. (several ounces) - Making something that looks great PRICELESS.
I do not know if the sand can be colored, but I get sand from the concrete plant a few miles from here and use it for making roads, bare ground and yes, all of my track is ballasted with it. My HO layout is more or less centered around the granet mountains that are here in SW OKLA.
Mike
Check out grits for sandblasting for colors. Fred
Sand can be used as ballast, but it also reverbrates like a drum head when it is glued down and will amplify the sound of your trains running along the track.
I can attest to that. I found it out the hard way.
unclebuck:
Want to thank you for this thread because you helped me solve another problem. I tried to get sandbox sand at my local Home Despot one time and was told they didn’t handle it - and, of course, being Home Despot, no one around had the slightest idea where I could get it.
I probably would never have ever considered using any grade of sand as ballast material; I would have thought of using it for sand casting. It does require straining through gauze but 100 lbs of sandbox sand will usually render about 35-40 lbs of foundry-quality (very fine grained, almost a powder consistancy) sand; its clay-silica content is not too far off ideal. “Green” (foundry) Sand goes for $10-12 a lb. The “residue” (from sandbox sand) makes a pretty fair filler for epoxy for casting rough wall “panels”, etc.
You know I never did try Lowes!!! The neighborhood Lowes wasn’t there when I went looking.
Another option is a large nursery. They often have all sorts of soils and decorative sands and such available. Hope that helps.
Oh yeah, if you use soils, run a strong magnet through it first just in case. Otherwise you may find it doing wonderfully damaging things to your motors.
Ain’t that the truth. Been there, done that, got the burned up motors to prove it.
Greeyings Chuck,
You can color sand by mixing several drops of latex paint in a cup of water. Wet down your sand and then set it aside to dry. Go by every-so-often and stir ir up. This will keep it from clumping. Be prepaired to wait a while for it to dry. And the microwave don’t work. The oven on your stove will but it takes a while.
I used decomposed granet on my layout and it works great. I buy an 80# sack for $4.00 from a place called Jim Stone. They sell stone, rock, slabs or what ever you want to call it, to be used in rock gardens, patios etc. I’ll take some photos of both that product and ballast from WS and send to you for comparison.
Another product you might think of is saw dust. It can be collored with food coloring, thinned paint and when sifted looks really great. I made the flowers on the Crepe Myrtle trees in my layout using died saw dust.
Hope this helps
Neal
Play sand is used often on my club layout as a cheap filler between tracks and in yards. A few spots the sand was used right up to grade in a yard . This was then stained w/ washes of brown/ black. Final touch ups of the ballast/ cinders were added to complete the job. Much of the layout is handlaid with full profile ties. The sand is also used as a filler/ base for the final ballasting of Scenic Xpress/ WS mix. Using the sand as a filler stretches the coverage of the expensive ballast. This doesn’t work for flextrack- the ties are too thin, unless you ballast with the sand. Not great results for mainline use. If your looking for an even finer grit, look for bags of white silica sand. The play sand and silica sand are very uniform in granular sizing and haven’t found any ferrous material so far.
Bob K.
Greetings Chuck,
Here are a couple photos of my ballast. The pile on the left is Woodland Senics medium brown ballast at 7.99 per container. The pile on the right is decomposed grannet at 8.00 per 80 # sack.
This is what it loods like next to the HO track,
These photos are not the greatest but hope they help,
Neal
I used some white “Pensacola Beach” sand on my recent diorama. I used it for the shoulder on the road. I put it down just like ballast and then did a gray wa***o make it look like gravel and it turned out quite well. I recently went to the Ben Franklins in Key West and found one pound bags of colored sand for 2.00. Expensive compared to buying 80# but when you are in the boonies you take what you get. I bought black and rust colored.
Terry[8D]
There’s even more. At pet shops they sell a fine walnut shell material for bird cages and it looks juts like WS medium grade gray ballast. Thanks for the help.
Has anyone tried colored grout as used in ceramic tile?
I’ve tried the grout thing and the colors are great, but the stuff is hard to wet. I confess I haven’t tried alcohol as a wetting agent though. I think it might be easier to air bru***he ballast color on after you ballast than try to color the sand but thats a guess. Also HD has a brand of paint, Ralph Lauren designer stuff that you can get sand mixed into, gives a great texture to gravel ares like roads and yards specially in the smaller scales. You can find play sand and mortar sand at HD in the bulding materials section along with the concrete mixes and the mortar. The associates often either don’t know or are too lazy to take you there cause its way in the back. Best way to shop HD is to take your time and wander every aisle til you know the store. Nice to do on a rainy day. Oh, did I mention I’m also a hardware and tool freak!!!
Does anyone know what sand will do to the running gear and bearings if it got into them?
I think regular sand might be too coarse for N scale ballast. It looks right for HO scale and I found a source of sand that’s A) plentiful, and B) cheap. Look no further than your nearest Wally World (Wal-Mart) and look in the Home and Garden center. They sell tubes of it used for weight (they sell like hotcakes in climates with snow). I sift it to get the big rocks out. It’s easy to apply using a 1" brush, “wet” water and diluted white glue.
This shouldn’t be an issue. Any sand or ballast should be glue down. If after glueing there are stray loose material either reglue or vacuum it up. If somehow sand gets into the mechanism, especially gears, they will be ruined if run for an length of time.
Bob K.