Which is your favourite color for ballast?

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

Which is your favourite color for ballast for mainline or your engine terminal?

2

On my Yuba River Sub, I use a combination of colors for ballast that represents Sierra Nevada granite. I use a mixture of light gray, medium gray with a small amount of cinders thrown in. For my yard trackage I use a mixture of buff and cinders.

Tom

3

For my older ISLs I perfer dark gray mixed with dirt and cinders and for “modern” I perfer dark gray,grass and a sprinkling of weeds.

4

I love to use limestone for the main line and cinders for the yard and industrial spurs.

5

I prefer shades of grey ,somes light ,some times dark.sometimes a mix.On older seldom used sidings I may just use dirt and weeds.

6

I’m also curious about what others do with their ballast. What would be great if we could get some pictures posted to see what the final result looks like.

Mainetrains [banghead]

7

It’s ages since I’ve posted on a ballast question! [:-^] Does anyone know how to link back to all the stuff I posted before?

One reason I’ve been busy is that I’ve been playing with a full size High Output Ballast Cleaner most of the summer. This takes everything out from under and between the ties, cleans it, chucks out the dirt, puts the good stuff back and tops up with new clean stuff. Depending on how much new stuff goes in relative to cleaned stuff the colour varies along the length that is cleaned. — Usually we could do half a mile a night so long as we got the track on time and nothing fell apart. Adjacent lines could be open.

So… what colour do I prefer? I don’t. I like the ballasts to tell stories about what (if anything) has been going on lately. If you work from photos, film or the real thing you can show everything from fresh new track to not maintained for decades.

I even got involved in laying a completely new line not long before Christmas. Only about a mile but there was never a line there before… job was only running about 9 hours late when I got away. Plenty of other places I’ve seen really bad track.

Hope this helps. [8D]

8

YahSU

I would have thought that the type of ballast used by any railroad would refect the rock type material available from local quarry’s. Then again, I guess that a railroad operating in a sandy desert would need to import rock for ballast from some place else.

I moldel a railway operating in late 1940’s Florida so my ballast looks like sand and crushed coral material. This is mixed up with green of various shades and then more green and sand is added on top in an irregular pattern so simulate a railway running in a tropical climate.

I have not built an engine terminal yet on my latest creation, but previously I used a speakled mixture of white/light grey/cinders and black stain to simulate fuel oil and coal where appropriate.

Kalh Tuch.

Bruce

9

Good point. I’ll start off with a photo of Deer Creek yard and the adacent main showing what I use. The main is ballasted with Sierra Nevada granite gravel, and the yard is largely ‘tailings’ from adjacent mine dumps.

Tom

10

I use the woodland scenics medium/light gray mix, as I think it makes the mainline look rather like a traditional mainline (and looking at norfolk southern’s trackage here, it matches fairly decent as well.)

EDIT: Seeing as someone suggested photos, as I’ve only begun to ballast my layout, here’s the final result I got when I ballasted a small strip of mainline for my fall foliage diorama (built it to see if I truly wanted to model fall, turns out I didn’t. And, yes, I know the GP30 looks horrible. I took these pictures when i was planning to sell it (I’m not anymore):

And one last picture I took when I had completed it (I think it was still drying):

11

Hi Bruce

You surprised me! I see you speak Greeks, nice.

12

try to find some prototype photos and go from there. for instance, on a multi-track main line the uphill track will show a lot of light coloration from locomotives sanding the rails while the downhill side will be dark with brake shoe residue. i try not to be too critical other’s work since my own leaves a lot to be desired but to me size is more of an issue than the color. some model photos show ballast that looks about the size of bowling balls but the color is nice. most commercial ballast products look way oversize to me so i often use N scale ballast for HO track and get a better effect. if you have a micrometer or caliper, measure a particle of your ballast and multiply by 87 in HO scale. you will be amazed at how big it really is.

grizlump

13

The largest bits of new ballast will pass through a 2" / 50mm mesh. That’s a bit over 0.5mm for H0. I’m surprised it’s that big and like others would tend to use N scale commercial ballast for H0 track.

Ballast in the track does get smaller. All the bits wear by abbrasion as trains flex the track as they go by. There can be other destructive effects but that is the main/common one. The abbrasion produces powder and smoothng of the stone. The powder and all sorts of stuff that gets into the ballast - like airborne dust, leaves, waterborne dust/mud, spillages and more - is why ballast has to be cleaned every so often… or not if maintenance is allowed to slip.

This also means that older ballast is smoother and more round while new is sharper and more angular… this affects how light reflects from it even before you start to get the stuff dirty. New ballast also cuts up you boots more when you walk on it.

Packers #1… an observation… your ballast goes very wide of the track in places. This isn’t necessarily wrong. There can be a number of reasons for it.

Ballast costs money and so it will usually be tight to the required formation… at least at first. Various things can move it about.

  • It may tend to disperse downwards and outwards as a general rule as it settles.

  • The formation may change location - e.g. with a relaignment

  • tracks may be taken out - e.g. double to single track

  • adjacent land movement may result in ballast being dropped to infill and strengthen… often old ballast is used.

When ballast is cleaned or just changed the old stuff has to go somewhere. If a RR can get away with it it is less cost and effort to dump it alonsi

14

Since I am modelling particular location, I went out of my way to try and research the ballast color for the locale.

The following image was taken to demonstrate a very poor track alignment issue that I had not noticed when cutting a gap. However, it does show the ballast of the main line and the cinders used in the mine area behind quite well.

This section has since been ripped out and fixed.

I am a big fan of the real rock ballast from the Arizona Rock and Mineral Co. http://www.rrscenery.com/ they have some ballasts that are sold for specific roads. Take a look in their catalog.

15

White and gray. Sometimes I use them singly in areas, other times I mix them.

16

I like using Aqua colored fish gravel. The smell leaves something to be desired though…

17

This is WS fine gray mixed with Scenic Xpress med gray.

Other areas of old sidings and yards are done with a mix of cinder/ dirt

Bob K.

18

I used some Woodland Scenics light gray that ended up looking too pale to me, so I toned it down with sprays of india ink mixed with pure alcohol. I have come to conclude that most commerical brands of “HO” ballast look too big when photographed. Even if you could prove it is the right size, to my way of thinking when you look at a photo of railroad track you tend not to notice individual ballast rocks, but rather an overall texture. I think smaller ballast, maybe even smaller than true “scale,” can simulate that more effectively.

Dave Nelson

19

Thanks. I was just letting the ballast flow down onto the roadbed. I like the idea of grading the old stuff to make a road for vehicles; my line is a supposedly old line that didn’t get much upgrades until my line bought it, so naturally, they would have changed the ballast, and of course, why not make a road. Thanks again! [:D]