should rail yards and staging areas have ballast? if so is it the same as mainline ballast.
In my (very inexperienced an unknowledgable) mind I would say that :-
1: yards should be ballasted, although the materials used would differ from the mainline, from what I understand the ‘prototypical’ ballast holds the track in place (6’ track pins werent used that I know of), therefor ballast of some sort is used in yards, although the appearance is vastly different to a mainline due to - cost, maintenance, usage, servicing spills and so on.
2: staging tracks I would offer the opinion that its your choice, hidden staging I wouldnt bother (unless I was practising ballasting techniques), visible staging is up to you and the image you are trying to portray.
I’m sure some experts will chime in , or go look at railimages.com to see how others have done it. either way its up to you, your railroad, do what makes you happy.
Have fun & be safe
Karl.
It really depends on the railroad and era you are trying to model. In the early days of railroading yards and sidings were often “ballasted” with native dirt. Today, however, everything starts out with a proper ballast. Sidings and yard tracks that start out ballasted eventually wheather to a point where dirt fills in around the ballast rock. Mainlines and mainline sidings are maintained more regularly, so the ballast stays clean. You should also consider the color and type of ballast your prototype uses or used.
If your shooting for one railroad in a particular ear, try posting a request for specific info. The people on this forum are a great resource who can often give you the info your looking for, or point you to the right reference materials. Don’t be affraid to ask.
Hidden staging (and hidden trackage in general) does not require ballast. It does make a good place to practice the technique, so that you will have the skill needed when starting on visible track.
A lot of factors enter into what the surface of a yard or industrial area looks like. Two things, though, are fairly constant. First, the entire yard area will have the entire surface at tie-top level, so yard workers can walk around without having to contend with an uneven surface. Second, the yard will not be ballasted to mainline standards (except for the track over the hump and through the retarders of a major gravity classification yard.)
In the steam era, a lot of yards were ballasted with cinders and clinker from the ash pits. Busy and important yards will often have gravel ballast, just not as good as that on the main tracks. Dying yards on poverty-stricken branches may have mud “ballast,” with some tracks buried to above railhead height. (Saw that on a PC yard in central Illinois in the mid-70’s. The sunken tracks were embargoed, with x-shapes of scrap timber nailed to the switchstand targets.) Likewise, well-maintained and busy yards may have a few weeds, but decrepit facilities frequently have knee-high grass and even bushes growing between the tracks - and sometimes between the rails!
Inevitably, a yard is a trash magnet. Spilled lading, blown-in paper and broken bottles (around the perimeter, not usually in the center of the yard) are common. More than a few yards are “ballasted” with spilled coal, sand and gravel from leaky hoppers and gons.
If possible, get a look at the prototype - from a public road or street overpass. In today’s security climate, trespassing can be hazardous to your arrest record.
Chuck
It all depends on what you’re modeling.
If you can find your way back into the pre 7/12 archive look up David Foster and ballast and you will find more notes on ballast that you will ever need.
If you succeed in this please tell us all how you did it!
If you don’t E mail me and I will try to send you a copy of relevent stuff from my back-up files.
Short answer is to take a look at as many pics for your era and type of REAL RR as you can find and see what they do.
This has been an outstanding topic and the posts have been equally outstanding - much very useful information has been conveyed in these postings. Great job fellows.
I would add a couple of things which is an addenda to tomikawaTT’s post.
Yards are slow-speed operations except for runaround tracks which I will get to in a second. Because they are slow-speed operations the don’t require, nor receive, the serviceing afforded to higher speed tracks. The area between “standing/holding traffic” tracks within the yards gets a lot of both foot and vehicular traffic; a lot of dust settles in the area which is weathered to mud which, in turn. gets a lot of foot and vehicular traffic and eventually (any) ballast gets pressed down into this mud and eventually becomes, for all practical purposes, invisible. It’s still there; you just can’t see it. Railroads lay down a coat of gravel on a periodic basis but this is for the benefit of personnel and really has little to do with the handling of steel-wheeled traffic. This “gravelling” is a “rubber tire” operation; I have a photo of a dump-truck depositing gravel in the yard at Othello, Washington - to be perfectly honest I didn’t realize what I had taken a photo of for a good twenty years; the object of my interest that day was an electric loke sitting there basking in the mid-winter sunshine surrounded by freshly fallen snow; it was February or March, 1964 -taken back when the Milwaukee Road was alive and well(?).
I might add, at this point, that sidings and side tracks (there is a difference) don’t get nearly the attention give to the “mainline”. That is a lot of the reason why they frequently are at a different (lower) level.
Despite this so-called “neglect”, railroads cannot ignore yard “maintenance” forever and eventually the yard will be “rebuilt” - and, frequently, reconfigured. A “new” yard is very distinct from an “old” one. I have
Re: in comparison to whether the prototype ballasts or not -
In the real world, if the tracks are not ballasted, they are still sitting on the ground. In the modeling world, if they’re not ballasted, they’re sitting on cork or foam. So in a sceniced area, unless you don’t mind the roadbed being visible, you’ll be applying dirt or ballast anyway.