SouthPenn’s reply on another post – “Some details on making coal car loads” regarding staining walnut shell for coal, got me thinking…
Woodland Scenics ballast is “tree nut by-products”, which I remember reading somewhere is crushed walnut shells, and costs $13 quart. A bag of raw crushed walnut shells is about $1 per quart, depending on the bag size. Even with the cost of the stain, that’s a big difference. Obviously there is a labor and mess factor to consider.
Has anyone gone the home-made ballast route?
How many linear feet of track will a quart cover?
Jim
What sort of store would sell crushed walnet shells at that price? I may have to look into that. [Amended post: ah, I now see that the crushed nut shells in question were used for reptile pets, exactly as I had seen at a local pet food store/see below].
There are other Woodland Scenics products which in essence are simply things repackaged in smaller lots making them more practical for hobby shops to stock and for us to buy. Their T pins are an example. And more practical/smaller lots usually comes at a price.
But do not downplay that revolution in nice scenery that WS largely brought about. Sure much of the stuff was THERE all along for guys to gather up and use and the articles and books were there too but it took WS to combine packaging and marketing and salesmanship to actually get the stuff under our noses at the same places we bought our trains.
Speaking of crushed nut shells the other day I was at my local pet store and found myself in the snake/lizard aisle. There is a sort of bedding for lizard terrariums that not only is crushed walnet shells, but looks finer than WS ballast and one of the available colors was somewhat the color of CNW “pink lady” ballast to boot. I did not price the stuff but it is intended to be cleaned out on a regular basis so I assume it is affordably priced. I may give it a try even though I much prefer real rock based ballast such as Highball (which i believe has left the business).
Any lizard/snake guys on this Forum who have the stuff sitting around and can report in?
Walnut shells are also used by ammo reloaders in tumblers to clean used ammo cases. I read somewhere that walnut shells were not ideal to use as ballast. You may want to research that idea before purchasing any.
Jim,By the time one dyes and dries those walnuts shells one can have a lot of commercial ballast down and forgotten about…
Personally I don’t think the mess would be worth the few bucks one might save. There’s a reason we stop making our own dyed saw dust grass when it became readily available.
I screened and sorted the small roadside rubble from deteriorating asphalt and used it for gravel, stones and some ballast. I think there are many uses or stones of different sizes with non-uniform color.
I used an old kitchen sifter to sort the finest which is about the right size for track ballast. But you should pass a magnet across it to pick up anything magnetic that could get caght up into a loco motor.
SouthPenn included a link in his post which brings up an Amazon page for ground walnut shells (Zilla Ground English Walnut Shells Desert Blend), comes in 5, 10, 25 & 50 qt bags. He stained it with Minwax Ebony stain for coal. Jim
The parent corporation of the Buckskin & Platte Rail Road is the Consolidated Materials Group.
The CMG mission is to incorporate found objects into every aspect of the building of the BS&P RR.
One of the found objects is the ballast.
I found a parking lot in Central City, Colorado, that, through erosion of the nearby hills, has piles of gravel.
My initial harvest consisted of a 5-gallon bucket, shovel and a strainer from a lettuce crisper insert. The straner has holes of approximately 3/8-inch. I sifted the material into the bucket for further processing.
Because of the amount of dirt in the material I first filled the bucket with the harvested material with water, stirred with my hand and allowed to settle. Next, I removed the rock from the water into a strainer with 1/4-inch holes.
I allowed that to dry and then, using progressively smaller holed strainers, refined the material. Just like the prototypical quarrying operations.
This yielded various sizes of material from 1/4-inch to coarse grain sand size, which is perfect for HO scale ballast.
Because it is real rock, it does not float when glued in place and adds local realism to the pike.
You always have to factor in your labor rate. Obviously, this is quite variable.
This is also how I have determined it is never cost effective for me to make my own pizza. The price per pizza is somewhere around $4 less per pizza than getting one delivered, but they don’t sell the ingredients in one-pizza units. You end up with, say, enough sauce for 3.5 pizzas, but cheese for 4, so you get to weird things like you actually have to buy enough materials to make 12 pizzas before you react full utility of the ingredients (any material wasted just drives up the price per pizza). If I price my labor at the same price work pays me, I exceed the price of the delivery pizza immediately.
Some things you might as well just buy. I’m not sure any homebrew beer guys are doing it save money by making their own!
I bought 10 quarts of walnut shells for $1.29 per quart. WS coal is $3.79 for less than a pint. You would need to buy 26 bags of WS coal ( to equal 10 quarts ) at $3.79 per bag. Thats $98.54!
My total cost was $28.52 for 10 quarts of walnut shells and 2 quarts of stain.
I have non-commercial ballast all over the layout, but all of it, along with all of the store-bought ballast I use, is real rock.
Nearly all of my yard and industrial track ballast is sand. Since it’s literally dirt cheap, I don’t need to worry much about coverage for a given volume of material.
I think it’s still relevant in the issue: are you actually saving money by fabricating Thing X, because your time has a value, even when it comes to a hobby. Is making your own ballast enjoyable? If yes, then the impact of your labor costs are irrelevant. If no and you’re doing it simply to “save money,” remember that you’re now “working for free” at a task you don’t want to do, so is it saving you at all?
The actual bag of ballast has a tree nut allergy warning on it. I suppose they could be pecans or chestnuts…
Then I got back pay coming from my other three hobbies railfaning fishing and video games. I know Business 101 teaches time is money but, not in all cases.
Our beloved hobby is nothing more then a payless bottomless money pit that we happily throw money into because we enjoy model trains…Not once in 60 years did I ever think my hobby time was worth money.No,at times when things wasn’t going as plan I thought it was a waste of time.
I suppose I could use beach sand for ballast. I think maybe 3 cups wold be enough. But I have a bottle of Scenic Express rock ballast for the track and I am going to use WS walnut shells for gravel roads.
