When it comes to track and ballast, I guess many of us think that reallistic track equates with lots of rust, grime, mud, weeds, etc. If you can, take a look at the Tom McNamara 1952 photo of a Pennsy 2-10-0 on Horseshoe Curve in the Fall 2005 issue of Classic Trains. I was awstruck at the beautiful track and ballast. It looks like new nickle-silver snap-track on meticulously ballasted Tru-scale roadbed; not a grain of ballast out of place! Maybe the Pennsy had Bachman EZ-Track on the “curve”? Awsome photo. [wow]
I agree, loathar. I was reasonably successful in my first ballasting job, over EZ-Track (okay, okay), but it wasn’t until I grimed it up to look like a road used by wet, sooty and oily steamers ran down it that the track looked realistic and good.
That said, I do appreciate Chuck’s post and I understand his appreciation for the careful work that the real road had done. I have seen newly laid and ballasted track, and it looks darned good.
Well maintained Class 1 mainlines just don’t look dirty and grimy. Conrail’s main through Central Indiana never looked that way. Yes, at some times it was better than others, but they knew the value of good track and ballast. PC on the other hand was dirty and grimy. The difference is in the railroad maintenance policy.
If you like dirty and grimy, go for it! But my short line prefers something a little more well maintained although not up to CR’s standards. [:D]
As someone who has walked on a lot of it I can tell you that ballast varies with location and age as well as regular (or irregular) maintenance.
It also varies by source… different roads would get different ballast from different quarries. This means that the original material can vary significantly in colour… from pink through grey and white to green… blue probably gets in there somewhere. Slag based balast will tend to be black.
That applies to new ballast.
Once it’s on the formation the local environment will influence the way the stone weathers… just the same as a stone building… put it in a smoky city and it will go black… countryside it may green… especially with a lot of trees around.
What happens will also depend on how well drained the roadbed starts out and has remained. Wet beds are not the sole problem of parents.
It takes time for weathering to impact the visual condition of ballast. During that time many things can happen…
Coal, iron, phosphates and sand traffic can all leave spillage that gets into the ballast… in yards it may hide the ballast (and ties) completely.
Spilled grain may also germinate… I’ve heard that this even happens on top of covered hoppers.
Maintenance can also top up the ballast with new ballast… sometimes this is planned, sometimes surplus from a nearby planned job is run off where the local crew know they need it.
Then there’s modern ballast cleaning… the ballast lifted out, cleaned … the rubbish sifted out… and the good stuff put back… this will have the changed (older) colour but the open grain of new ballast. .
…which introduces the point that new ballast is more open textured while older is both compacted and filled with crud… to put that technically “the interstices can become obstructed”. The interstices in ballast are important for two reasons… they allow drainage and they allow
Um? Guess I got a bit carried away… I’ve spent a lot of my life walking, standing or sitting near the stuff…occasionally flat on my face on it… the dug out beds for wet track can hurt if you’re not paying attention.
Guess the short version is… your track is always there…if you want your trains to look good make the effort of studying what it really looks like in your prefered location… then model it.
The basic work (rail and ties) is done for you. Do you study loco pics and weather your locos?
You see a pic of a really good loco, detailed weathered, the works… what gives it away as not real?
Agreed. That’s why I take the time to also weather my track like the protoype. Here’s a sample of some ballasted and weathered track on my HO Siskiyou Line:
Notice the main is larger rail and looks like it gets more serious traffic, while the siding has smaller rail, looks less used and more rusty. Also the siding is lower than the main. I deliberately weather between the rails with dry powder colors to get this look.
I’ll be covering techniques like this and others not only in an MR article (probably will appear early next year) but also in my upcoming scenery video (volume 4 - due April 2006). It’s pretty simple to do and really makes the track look great. You can also find more in my scenery Forum Clinic on here, see: http://www.trains.com/community/forum/topic.asp?page=4&TOPIC_ID=32122
Of course, it’s hard to beat MicroEngineering track also, with all those tiny spike heads.
This photo is from the west end of Rice Hill, where new scenery work is going on at the moment. This location is in video volume 3 as the opener before we get into the nitty gritty details of electrical and DCC stuff.
This should reinforce Joe’s contention. It is the CPR mainline 40 miles west of Kamloops, BC, at a place called Wallachin (wall-uh-SHEEN). I took this photo two weeks ago right at CPR’s ballast quarry. Neat, huh?
Notice the dirty rust color on the ties from the rails at the left. That’s why I don’t fret when brush painting the rail sides a dirty rust color if I get some paint on the ties. Looks just like the prototype then!
So true, in the steam era, railroads were a symbol of national unity and prosperity. Railroads took pride in their engineering, track and plant maintaince and equiptment. With few exceptions, locomotives and cars recieved regular washings and new paint , railroad owned structures were not permited to decay. Too often we modlers falsely recreate the steam era period by excessive weathering with a healthy dose of decay, just because, for good measure , not every railroad was as down troden as the Colorado narrow guages.
It was was the era of affordable labor, when SP installed hundred of miles of paving bricks and wild flowers along it’s ROW, one section crew for each 10 miles of track guarenteed razor edge ballast and true rails.
There’s a little detail that’s highly visible on the prototype( N&W@ Blue Ridge, PRR @ Horseshoe, ATSF @ Cajon, etc.) and rarely modeled and that’s where there’s multiple track on a serious grade and one track is whitened from the repeated application of sand and the downhill track isn’t,
What is your paint mixture for the rust color on your rails? Modelers are usually told to avoid the bright colors, yet the rust in that photo of the CPR track sure looks bright to me.
I use PollyScale water-based paint because I don’t like the toxic fumes of solvent paints and PollyScale sticks well to metal rail and dries flat.
I use Roof Brown for the main and DRGW depot brown for the lesser-used spurs. I like the depot brown because I think it looks just like a “dusty rust” rail color as you see in the photo from selector.
dthurman, I wish I knew the correct answer. I took the photo on the foot boards at the end of one of two parked ballasting cars, each apparently a little long in the tooth. (some of the US railfans must be cringing here due to my obvious trespass, but…we’re Canajun, eh?) So, the right track comes from the quarry loading zone to the right and behind me, but it clearly continues through the switch and down out of sight, parallel to the twin mains at rusty left. It could be that the ballast cars were used to fill between the rails only on that siding, and that the side openings were kept closed because the ballast added to the adjacent tracks had already done a good job between the tracks.
I have a piece fo the ballast, and it is clearly grey. Where they got the whiter stuff is anybody’s guess.
This is a shot of the BN (ex-CB&Q) track in Frannie, WY where the branch to Cody takes off to the right. It shows some interesting differences between the mainline on the left, which goes on south and and east through Lovell to Casper and on to Nebraska.
Note the difference in rail sizes between the main and the siding, from which the Cody lines branches. The siding is also somewhat wavier than the main. There’s a shallow drainage “Vee” in the ballast between the tracks (not very pronounced), but the ballast is pretty uniform across the entire profile.
