[:)]In the transition era, what level of maintenance did passing tracks receive. Were they up to the same standard as the adjacent mainline, or closer to yard trackage. I’d like to model accurately and also think the visual separation would be interesting. I presume that less important branches may have been different than mainlines. I’m proto-lancing a NYC branch that borrows from the Whitewater and Adirondack lines. I’ve looked at some photo and video resources and they are ambiguous.
The last word in your post is the key: the answer to your question IS ambiguous!
It all depends on several things: the road you’re modeling, the year, the TIME of year, and the importance of the line you’re modeling. They all play an important part in the look of your secondary tracks.
I’m modeling the NKP in 1950, so I’m in a similar boat as you. In GENERAL (very general!), this is what I’m planning to do with my tracks:
Mainlines: initial layer of cinders, covered by a thin layer of limestone ballast (steam-era roads were skimpy about their use of “real” rocks). The edge of the rock ballast should have virtually no rocks out of place.
Secondary tracks and main yard tracks: well graded and leveled cinders, at or below the tops of the ties.
Low use tracks: VERY fine cinders (black mud, basically) scattered everywhere, usually above the tops of the ties. Grass and weeds only growing where there wouldn’t be a lot of RR activity (spurs and private sidings).
I just went through my copy of “Rails across the Midlands”, which is an indespensable general reference photo book for anyone modeling the Rust Belt during the steam era. It highlights most of the major roads in the area, and that’s what I saw as the commonality between every road and their ballasting. The book was printed in 1964, but you can regularly find copies on Ebay for around $30.
If you REALLY want the specific answer to what NYC ballast looked like, there’s only one way to find out: start looking through EVERY photo you can find. There are literally thousands of steam-era NYC photos online, which should give you a pretty good idea about how you should model their ballast.
It varys, also, with how you are treating the passing track. If trains always take the right hand track for the direction they are facing, then both are usually maintained to the same standards. If the passing track is seldom used, then it may well have lighter rail, less ballast, higher tie spacing, and speed restrictions. Branchline tracks also varied. Again, how much is it used, how heavy/long are the trains, and how fast do the trains travel.
NYC was also experiencing financial problems (which ultimately led to the merger with PRR) and so they were probably skimping the maintenance on lesser used trackage.
As orsonroy suggested, look at all the pictures you can find, for your time period.
Enjoy
Paul
The state of maintenance, or lack thereof, depended more on the railroad company’s finances, geography, climate, and other factors that are going to be locale specific, so there is no simple answer to your question. As others have suggested, study as many photos as you can find of the time and location you’re interested in to get a general idea of the condition of the track. Even today, I see photos and videos of Class I main-line trackage that is so bad that speed restrictions are in place. In extreme cases, it would be difficult to model such poor trackwork realistically. Keep in mind, too, that the angle from which a picture has been taken makes the track look much worse than it may have actually been. For example, if you have an opportunity to view a video series called “Trains Unlimited” that was on The History Channel, you can sometimes glimpse trackage that looks so bad you wonder how a train can stay on it, especially a view where the camera is looking down the track for a long distance at an oncoming train. If you could have seen that same trackage up close, it wouldn’t look nearly as bad as it does in a video or still picture.