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Ballasting Track – Excellent Tips To Execute A Perfect Job
Use an eye dropper to achieve more accuracy and avoid damaging other parts of your railroad.
Ballasting Track can be quite tricky and it takes at most patience and effort to get it looking right. Ballast is laid between the tracks and sometimes on the sidings of the sleepers such that one can in a realistic effect there are different techniques for laying down Ballasting Track.
If you are using cork it is important that you stand the edges of the slope first so that the smaller stones will obey better. Use almost 70% isopropyl alcohol spray as the wetting agent instead of plain water.
With the help of an eyedropper you can do a better job and avoid spraying on the scenery. To soak the Ballasting components use a mixture of white glue and alcohol in 50-50 proportion. These tips will help you do your job perfectly.
You’ll get a more detailed guide to step by step ballasting in the members area at the online Model Train Club.
4 Responses to Ballasting Track – Excellent Tips To Execute A Perfect Job
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Good start. I would like to know how experts lay the ballast. smoothly and effectively which looks realistic
A lot of ballasting on exhibition layouts looks ghastly, back in the 1930’s most British lines had beautifully even ballast shoulders on plain track and a black cinder path beside, very much like commercially available underlay, and in station situations ballast was often featureless flat half way up the sleepers much more like the effect of card sleepers on a painted base than the liberally applied ballast of many layouts.
Present day full size practice is to spread ballast around liberally with no regard to tidiness but it looks very wrong to scatter ballast untidily on a steam era layout
I like to apply ballast dry and use a small 1/2 inch brush to spread the ballast and i usually do between the rails first. Make sure that the ballast is exactly where you want it and not to thick. Especially around the moving parts of the turnouts and that you have not put to much between the rail and the guide rails and of course the frogs. once I am satisified I apply the isopropyl alcohol to the ballast material and apply the glue 50/50 mix with the alcohol with an eye dropper making sure all the material is liberally soaked. I did try spraying the glue but found the pressure shifted some of the ballast into areas where it was not wanted. Ballasting is one of the time consuming jobs. When I do the area on the outside of the rails the same applies but I use masking tape to get a nice even edge. When the ballast is thoroughly dry I lightly apply masking tape over the ballast before applying the scenicing material. Gently pull the masking tape over itself so that it does not shift or pull any of the material off. Do this before the ballast or the scenic material is still not quite dry as this will leave a better edge. Experiement on an area that is not seen so much and do not do long runs at a time.
I break all of the rules when it comes to ballasting track, my buddy calls my layout”editable” because I am always changing it. I use a sound board type of material for the table surface. It is light weight, and you can easily press track nails into it, no pounding. I lay all of my track down (mostly flex track), then tack it in with track nails. I don’t bother to use cork roadbed, I feel that it is too high, and too much trouble to use. I then pour the track ballast onto the track, and spread it out with a brush. I don’t bother to spray it with glue solutions, because I hate to deal with cleaning it off the track and turnouts. I figure that as long as I don’t move the table around, the ballast will stay put. I even use the ballast to bevel curves or to raise and lower the track. If and when I want to make any changes to the track work, I just pull the nails, and lift the track off the table, and scoop up the ballast and re-use it. I can always re-use the track because it isn’t stuck to the ballast, and it is still flexible.
This is my preference, it works for me. It will not work for most people who want to make more permanent layouts, or modules that will be moved all of the time.