Model railroaders conventionally secure track ballast with a coat of diluted white glue or matte medium, applied either as a mist or as droplets. This technique, however, tends to result in something less than a prototypical appearance, especially on mainline track. Rather than sloping sharply away from the track and ties, the ballast edge tends to be dispersed many scale feet distant.
To achieve a more prototypical appearance, I do the following. First, I lay down a thin coat of dry medium ballast on cork roadbed in the traditional fashion, using a brush to sweep any excess from the tops of ties. Second, I soak a two-to-three foot section of ballast along the outside of each track with dilute matte medium. Third, I draw a small flexible putty knife along each side of the cork roadbed, producing a nice sharp ballast edge with a prototypical slope. During this process, I regularly clean off any ballast that has stuck to the putty knife or that has mounded up above tie level. If there are any imperfections in the ballast edge, I eliminate them by carefully sprinkling a very light coat of dry medium or fine ballast.
This is similar to my own preferred method, which I call “slurry ballasting”, which basically puts the glue down first and then pours ballast into it. This creates a slurry which I can then shape while wet. Conventional wisdom is that you’re not supposed to touch the ballast once glue is applied, but there’s at least two of us putting the lie to that claim.
I’m working in N-scale, and I’ve always disliked the results most modelers get when using N-scale cork roadbed and regular ballasting techniques. Too often, I see that the hobbyist has ended up with a hump at the ballast shoulder, and little apparent slope. I’ve taken to using HO cork, one half-strip is just about the width of N track, which means I must align it offset from track centerline… just need to be careful when laying out the track. This does two things: it give a higher roadbed, as well as a narrower one. I am free, then, to shape the shoulder as I think it should be, although it does mean using more ballast overall.
I’ve added decorative sand from art supply stores to my ballast blends; it is very fine by comparison to the over-the-counter ballast by Woodland Scenics, and tends to fill all the interstitial spaces between granules in the slurry. This makes the slurry easier to work with, and when dry it makes the ballast very strong. Because the glue starts out at the bottom, you end up assured that glue has penetrated throughout. But since you’ve got to do all your shaping while wet, it means working in shorter segments.
I appreciate posts such as this because it’s always good to see how other do the mundane things in the hobby. I will be the first to admit that my ballast is just this side of horrible in my o/p. Guys at the club say that I am way too critical of my own work but that their o/p not mine…lol.
A method I have been using with a much higher level of success is a combination of what I picked up watching one of the Allen Keller videos and a little bit of a conventional ballasting technique if you will.
The first thing I do prior to track laying now is paint the roadbed material with as close of a ballast color as possible. I used to just paint the shoulders prior to ballasting but figured the extra effort may pay off if there are any areas that are not quite ballasted thoroughly. Generally cheap battleship gray craft paint works fine…
I start off with a good quality real ballast such as Smith ballast or Highball .Some of you may have great success with Woodland Scenics ballast and I’ve seen some nice jobs myself but for me that stuff is not my cup of tea. If you want real looking ballast then you need to work with real stone not ground up walnuts or chunks of ground up foam. I then paint the ballast shoulders only with straight Elmers White glue working on about a 3’ section at a time. I then sprinkle on my fine limestone light gray ballast (my current ballast) on to the shoulders with my ultra high tech plastic spoon. I purchased one of those ballast spreaders from Micormark when I first got back into the hobby, it now is used as a paper clip holder on my desk.
I will spread the ballast a little as needed with my finger tip but not too much being as the ballast is only going to stay where the white glue is painted on there isn’t much need to do anything else. I let the now ballasted shoulders dry for at least 24 hours I will then take a dry paint brush and clean off the excess ballast or even use my small hand vac. If care is taken when painting the white glue you get a nice
I lay flextrack using adhesive caulk and while the caulk is still “wet” I tamp the first layer of ballast into it using an old piece of cork roadbed
For the edges beyond the ties, I add more caulk (squeezing out a bead and then smoothing it with one of those fake “your name here” credit cardss that come in junk mail), and shape it with the card or a putty knife (the beveled edge of cork roadbed is not a realistic angle) before adding ballast, which again I tamp into the caulk
If done just right this can be final ballasting but more likely a second application is needed, using conventional soaking/shaping/Scenic Cement - Matte medium - diluted glue/wetting with alcohol / water mix (sometimes with some india ink mixed in to darken the final result).
I want to have some poorly ballasted track on my layout. I’m thinking cinder or dirt ballast, a real branchline look. Any recommendations on cinder ballast or what kind of profile to use for this look?
Real dirt would work fine. Just be sure you sterilize it, run a magnet over it to get out any bits of unseen metal that a loco could pick up, then sift it trrough various sizes of sives and finally through a piece of panty hose for the finest dirt, often used for dirt roads. You should be able to use all the different sizes in different places on your layout. Since your track lacks good maintenance you can add ground foam to show grass and weeds between the rails, be sure none of it can get tangled in locos.
I have just been going over this in my head and it’s good to see some of the ideas I had in there work. I have tried different ballasting methods and have not been completely satisfied with any of them. The tips given here have definitely helped me narrow down my theories on technique.
Campbell makes a cinder ballast but it looks more like fresh new cinders to my eyes. I have use sifted fireplace ash (from a wood burning fireplace) using the same adhesive caulk technique that I outlined above. Keep ash away from gears motors and bearings because it is abrasive, and a dust mask and latex gloves would not be a bad idea as well.
My methods are outlined in my Frugal Modeler column in the NMRA midwest region Waybill