I am at the point on my HO RR where I want to ballast, and ground foaming a small area of the terrain, tunnel/mountain, etc on the layout I started in March 08. I plan to use Woodland scenics turf & other ground foams for ground cover. For ballast, I want it to look good, but, would like to use something less expensive than woodland Scenics ballast. Any alternate ballast suggestions? If I do use woodland scenics ballast, not sure if I should use fine, medium, or perhaps a 50/50 mixture of both sizes?
There is no foam yet in place on the sub road bed or mountain/tunnel in the following photos, just paint.
I model in HO and I use ballast as meets my needs. I sometimes use fine ballast but it looks too much like sand, so I use quite a bit of medium as well. A good substitute, if you can get it, is ground-up gravel, such as can be found alongside a country road. I’ve been known to collect this and sift it into different grades. It’s a bit of work but it’s free.
If you will go to general discussion on the forum and go to the second page, right at the top you will see Ballasting. We all had a good discussion the last two days on technique, from gravel, ground dust from roadways and parking lots to sandbox sand mised with dry powered tempra paints from Hobby L.
