I’m going to attempt to ballast my track for the first time soon. I have to ballast around 75 feet of track. I was going to use “Woodland Scenics Coarse Ballast brown”. It comes in a 32oz shaker bottle for $7.49 and I’m going to buy it from these guys:
Is that an OK price? Is coarse good for O-27 track or should I get something smaller? I’m going to sprinkle it on my roadbed and then spray with a 1:1 mixture of water and elmers glue until it is soaked. How many ounces should I get? They sell smaller containers too. Any tips to make it look good and minimize the amount of ballast I need to buy?
Although I dont know how much ballast you will need, a good tip is to only use the minimum amount of ballast, JUST ENOUGH to cover the roadbed until is is no longer visible. Dont overdue it, you’ll waste good ballast and risk using to much in some places. When its in place just brush it to make it even and glue.
I’m not sure how far a 32 oz bottle of Woodland Scenics coarse ballast will go. It’s smaller than the O- scale ballast that I offer. A five pound bag of Brennan’s Better Ballast will cover about 18 feet of O27 track ballasted even with the tie tops and with a gentle slope on each side. You can see it on the CTT Project layout-- Build the Sandy Harbor Terminal Ry. This four part series started with the December issue and finishes in the upcoming March issue.
Just from photos I’ve seen, people use way too big ballast. If you look at a photo of a real train track (over on trains.com) and then look at model pictures, usually the ballast is way too big. Look at some model pictures (especially toy trains) and if you were to compare it to a real track, the ballast would be 4 to 6 inch rocks.
Post pictures of your progress so we can confuse the issue more.[:)]