I’m using a light gray ballast for the main line and dark cinders for the yard and industrial tracks. Now I’d like to do a passing track with cinders on the siding and lighter ballast on the main. I’m looking for techniques for applying the two different colors along the long edge between the two tracks.
My initial thought was to apply the cinders to the passing track and let dry. Then brush on the glue (matte medium) to the adjacent slope for the main line. Maybe use it full strength so it is less “runny” and less likely to wick up on the dark ballast side?
For my prototype and era, the dark smelter slag ballast was used on the main with other materials elsewhere. Sometimes a finer grade of the same dark mainline ballast was also used on passing sidings. Between the main and industry track at right there is some overlap of the two types into each other, as typically occurs due to maintenance and switch crews walking through the stuff.
Here’s another location with different types of track usage side-by-side. There are long stretches where two or more colors meet, and I mostly let the ballast end up wherever I deposit it using a spoon. Here and there I may reapply one color or the other to make a neater edge, although I’m modeling the era of machine maintenance where ballast margins weren’t as tidy as in earlier times.
I think you are on the right track (pun intended) with doing the siding first. I think that the the siding would receive less maintenance and the reballasting of the main would occur more often, so it would drift onto the secondary ballast. Don’t see a need to apply it differently, as stated above, they do get mixed on the prototype when they are side by side.
Visually, you are more likely to see stray ballast from the main show up here and there on the siding than you would be to notice any stray cinders on the main. Another reason to do siding first, then main line and not get too hyper about a few grains of mainline ballast ending up near or on the siding.
You’ve been given great ideas to accomplish this. The critical part to make the scene more realistic and appealling is how the mainline gray ballast “feathers” along the division between the two tracks. This may be a bit more trial and error to suit the look you desire. Many times, I as well as others have done this in a close proximity as finishing off the change, only to have to touch up places so not to create such a sharp contrast between the two.
Lay the darker cinder on the siding but allow to extend to the main, then ballast the mainline. Set/ glue at this time and don’t worry about the stray mainline grains at this point. After dry, go back and add (even if done by minute pinches to drop ballast) to get that feathered/ scattered look. Keep looking at different angles and distances for the look you like. If too much happens to get placed and not happy, just vaccumn up and do again. Then secrure it down.
Not as much contrast to dark cinder you’re doing, but shows difference to less or little used/ maintained sidings.
During final scenery touch up, ballast and ROW done w/ staining between rails, weeds and fresh ballast. Some spots are done a few times (diamond/ junction ballast not decided at this point) some want differt other don’t- so it stays bare for now
Passing sidings should be built to the same specs and ballast as the mane lion. Sidings into wayside businesses and industries are usually of lower quality. This of course does not always hold true. The Bakken Oil Express terminal is fully heavy weight and as well ballasted as the main line. Ditto the sidings at the Ethanol plant in Richardton, but the ballast and color is different since it was put in by a different contactor and the stones came from a different source.
That’s highly variable. For my prototype, sidings were mostly lower than the main, and usually had different ballast. Sometimes it was the same color as the main, but finer material that didn’t drain as well. In others it was completely different. Speed restrictions on sidings are usually much lower due to the quality of rail, ties, roadbed etc. Industry and other company tracks are often rougher still. Modern sidings on heavily traveled routes can be built to higher standards, as BNSF in ND like you cited.
My way is a bit different. I first paint a line of white glue approx where I want the ballast to end and add ballast (started doing this more for the turnouts). Once dry I vacuum up the excess and then put in the ballast and matt medium it with a pipette. I then vacuum up the excess and then lay in anything I want like plants or stray colors along with other scenery near the mainline and a the same time fix any edging that needs a bit more and then do a matt spray (left out the details of wet water etc for a shorter post). Some of this may seem like extra work but you end up with a groomed main.
Passing sidings should be built to the same specs and ballast as the mane lion.
I agree. Here in Northern Ontario the sidings and the mainline are ballasted with the same slag.
/quote]
And I disagree. When I lived in Peagram, TN, I watched a CSX MW crew reballast and realign the track passing through town - the MAIN track. The siding, except for the hundred feet or so from the turnout frog to the clearance point at each end, got a look, a lick and a promise. The middle 95% of the siding is at least a foot lower than the main and ballasted with a different grade of stone, so I doubt that it’s been maintained to mainline standard any time recently.
OTOH, my prototype maintained both tracks to the same standard at places where one track became two tracks. Since the paired tracks were operated directionally (and connected at the ends by spring switches) neither was a ‘siding.’
I’ve had trouble operating on some other layouts where it is hard to determine which track is the “siding”. I have a hard time seeing the difference between code 83 and code 70 rail or if the roadbed was slightly depressed (except in photographs). A schematic diagram on the fascia or in a timetable would work, but it requires guest operators to find and read the instructions (a map in this case). It may or may not be prototypical, but on my layout if the dispatcher says “take the siding”, you’ll know to head for the cinders.
It turned out that once I had the dark ballast firmly glued down and dry on the siding, it was not a big deal the next day to use a brush to remove stray bits of lighter ballast that had wandered over the dark before gluing down the lighter ballast on the main.
