"Back in the day" Ballast....

Often enough, back in the "real" postwar period, ballast wasn't used at all on many or most 3-rail layouts. More often than not, the "ballast" would have been a gray painted strip, or gray paint with coarse sand or other gritty material mixed in. Unfortunately, I'm old enough to remember.

Thanks Guys,

I think I need to do a little hands on research and just see what....works!

Rick.

Yep, gray paint and green paint were fundamental to postwar layout scenery.

A ballast "trick" used in the SW corner of the old Lionel showroom layout was to install quarter round molding along the edges of the O gauge tubular track. This molding was painted gray with some ballast glued on to represent a typical ballast profile.

In this photo, you can just barely see how the molding created an open, ballast-free area right under the track, but gave the impression of a ballast profile from the sides. Just one more memorable feature of that layout that left its mark on those of use forced to use paint to represent ballast.



Jim

I agree with what Allan has said -- and in those 'postwar' days there were a lot more layouts per block, too. But for those year-round "serious" layouts I think the most widely used ballast was by "Life-Like", of Baltimore MD [ who are still in business ]. It came in orange-white boxes, and was quite good as I recall as far as 'scale size' and color.

Life-Like also made quite a number of other scenic items that were "indispensable" for the postwar layouts:
- Also boxed were 'grass' and 'earth' [ ? ], the latter a medium brown color -- the same base material as grass, just dyed differently
- Trees and lychen
- "Landscape mats", which were kraft paper with a coating of grass, 'earth', or ballast

One of my memories is carefully sweeping up the ballast for reuse every time the layout changed or was rebuilt, and saving it in coffee cans [ or other cans, many of which painted gray were from the "oil storage depot" ]. Ballast that got contaminated with grass, earth, or a lot of coal was segregated, and was used in yards or industrial sidings, etc.

Ah, the fun....

Best regards, SZ

All the post war "home made" layouts in my area used only paints on the plywood. My neighbor built a 4'X16' Lionel layout and painted the whole thing green. Then, when it dried painted track roadbed brown and streets black. He glued down green sawdust stuff for grass. I remember the glue in the day, glass bottle with rubber tip and when you pressed down the glue would come out of a slit in the rubber. I believe my neighbor borrowed (????????) the glue from his school. No sound deadening in those days.....just pure fun.

TEX
Steve

quote:

Originally posted by TexSpecial:
...glass bottle with rubber tip and when you pressed down the glue would come out of a slit in the rubber.

TEX
Steve

I remember it was called "mucilage". When's the last time you heard that word!

Also, remember the white paste glue that looked like dried mashed potatoes when it hardened?

Jim

Thanks to all.

Rick.

Ah, yes! Mucilage! Good for gluing paper products, in particular; not so good for other stuff. An important component in every kid's school supply kit back in the day (now all they haul around is a laptop and iPhone).

And I do remember the various materials from Life-Like, including those grass mats and boxes of unrealistically colored "sawdust" grass and other materials. I glued them down with white glue--the same sort that we use today.

And I can't even begin to count how much lychen I used over the years. Great stuff before ground foam made its appearance. Had a mild but distinctive smell to it.

But you guys do realize that we're dating ourselves in a rather pronounced manner!

quote:

Originally posted by Allan Miller:

... Had a mild but distinctive smell to it.

...possibly related to its other name - "reindeer" moss???

Allan, not much about me anymore that doesn't say "dated"....or is it out-dated?

But, then again...better out-dated than expired!

Jim

"better out-dated than expired!"

You got that right!

Rick:

You do have options with tubular track. I use it exclusively on my layout and back in 1996 I discovered Johnson rubber molded roadbed designed to make tubular track look much more realistic. The track fits into slots molded into the roadbed. It also helps to reduce track sound. It is a wonderful product.

quote:

Often enough, back in the "real" postwar period, ballast wasn't used at all on many or most 3-rail layouts. More often than not, the "ballast" would have been a gray painted strip, or gray paint with coarse sand or other gritty material mixed in. Unfortunately, I'm old enough to remember.

I'm afraid I am old enough to remember and that's exactly how it was on my 027 layout from about 1953 to the end of the first phase of my life in toy trains.

The same grey was used for the roads as under the track.

And the big problem then as I recall it, conceptually that is, was what to do about grade crossings. Especially where you had several tracks close together. You really wanted proper grade crossings but all which was available for a little kid were these plastic things that fit under the tracks. I don't recall what make they were. Marx maybe. Some here will remember them.

But they only fit the straight track pieces. And as an eight or nine year old I didn't know anything of scratch building grade crossings.

I mostly just had the roads painted under the track, but was never satisfied at how it looked.

And you know what? I'm still doing it that way. I've skipped ballast. I have too many tracks close together, like three parallel mainlines and ballast would just get too "busy" looking and be too much work to install.

The other reason is, I don't know anymore from year to year when we'll be downsizing, and moving and the layout will have to come down...

quote:

Originally posted by Allan Miller:
Often enough, back in the "real" postwar period, ballast wasn't used at all on many or most 3-rail layouts. More often than not, the "ballast" would have been a gray painted strip, or gray paint with coarse sand or other gritty material mixed in. Unfortunately, I'm old enough to remember.

Yea I'm that old too.

Alot of guys cut wood strip and beveled the edge to make it look like roadbed.
Today is the "You want it buy it" world.Those guys had to have woodworking skills.
Some like me and my carpet central just paint the cork roadbed . I spray mine with a textured paint from valspar called Manhattan Mist, it makes it look like granite.
I spray painted all my roadbed under my switches on my N scale layout to try to keep the gravel out of those old open geared engines. You suck up some ballast and you talk about a PITA to get that stuff out of there.

David

quote:

Originally posted by Jim Policastro:

quote:

Originally posted by TexSpecial:
...glass bottle with rubber tip and when you pressed down the glue would come out of a slit in the rubber.

TEX
Steve

I remember it was called "mucilage". When's the last time you heard that word!

Also, remember the white paste glue that looked like dried mashed potatoes when it hardened?

Jim

Thats cause the main ingredient to that glue was "My Friend Flicka"

David

On my first layouts I used roof shingle granules. Would usually find these in the train yard where a hopper had a leaky door.

The most readily available brand of Mucilage was "LePages" in a brown-ish glass bottle with the red-rubber slit-tip.
Yes, it's better to be "dated' than dead.....
Larry D.

At the end of the day green paint with gray for ballast is sure easy to keep clean.

Growing up in the 60s my dad used vermiculite for balast

Al

quote:

Also, remember the white paste glue that looked like dried mashed potatoes when it hardened?

No one else would admit to it....but we used to eat the white paste we used in class because it smelled like mint. That was before I found out about Lavoris mouth wash, Vitalis hair tonic and (what all the girls liked) Brylcream in a tube.....gee that was great stuff. Dated myself also I guess.

TEX
Steve

I would still love to find a box of Life-Like lychen and open it... just to smell it. Memories! Even now, whenever I open a bottle of Solvaset, or old Floquil, and the aroma drifts into my olefactory senses: Time travel is experienced!

But, I digress.

In my case, I would NOT want to replicate what I did as a youth. My efforts were't too convincing or good. What I WOULDN'T mind replicating is the nice looking layouts in publications BACK THEN. Those were the layouts that inspired my lackluster childhood efforts. Those are the layouts that found a good balance between toy trains and nice scenery. The layouts that most influenced my early years were the pictures found in the Bantam book "Model Railroading".

Even today, I think I could enjoy creating such a layout... but with a few "modernizations" thrown in for good measure.

Ah, the fun of dreaming found within model railroading!

Andre

quote:

Originally posted by Jim Policastro:

quote:

Originally posted by TexSpecial:
...glass bottle with rubber tip and when you pressed down the glue would come out of a slit in the rubber.

TEX
Steve

I remember it was called "mucilage". When's the last time you heard that word!

Also, remember the white paste glue that looked like dried mashed potatoes when it hardened?

Jim

Get your mucilage here.

quote:

Originally posted by laming:
I would still love to find a box of Life-Like lychen and open it... just to smell it. Memories! Even now, whenever I open a bottle of Solvaset, or old Floquil, and the aroma drifts into my olefactory senses: Time travel is experienced!

But, I digress.

In my case, I would NOT want to replicate what I did as a youth. My efforts were't too convincing or good. What I WOULDN'T mind replicating is the nice looking layouts in publications BACK THEN. Those were the layouts that inspired my lackluster childhood efforts. Those are the layouts that found a good balance between toy trains and nice scenery. The layouts that most influenced my early years were the pictures found in the Bantam book "Model Railroading".

Even today, I think I could enjoy creating such a layout... but with a few "modernizations" thrown in for good measure.

Ah, the fun of dreaming found within model railroading!

Andre

We used to call that stuff Deer Moss .You can find it a lot of places here in Virginia. One of these days I'm gonna box some up and send you a bunch.

It does pretty good as scenery with a little green paint and some foam.

David

Hi DPC!

We have tons of it here, too. Almost all of it has extremely fine limbs/branches/whatever. Much of it would be "good enough" to use once pickled/colored without ground foam. Have thought many times about harvesting/pickling... but have you ever read the directions on how to pickle the stuff??? No way.

The "smell" I remember when opening a box of Life-Like lychen was probably from the pickling process mixed with the original lychen smell?

Re: Ballast...

There's some really fine granulated stuff used in the frac sand business that looks just like O scale cinders. I see it here locally where it's leaked out of hopper cars and caused mini-piles of it between the rails. I am thinking about gathering up several 1 lb coffee cans full for possible use "one of these days".

Andre

Speaking of ballast, you know it's out there in all different colors too. On a ex-IC line here it's downright yellow looking. I guess that's leakage of some sort from cars or engines plus a lot of years.

There're also dark heavy black lines of accumulated oil down the middle of some tracks with a visual effect not unlike our middle rail in O Gauge. That's especially true if it hasn't rained in a while.

Anyway, even if I was tempted to put down ballast in the parts of the layout I normally work around, there's the question of what to do about the rest of it that nobody sees from up close.

Do some here ballast only part of the layout?? What's done about that?

Many of the layouts in the magazines that I have that go back into the 30's and 40's show that people were just as creative with what they used for ballast as some are today. On the simple side of things people would just paint the area under the track gray. Using roofing paper under the track was another popular early method. Using real crushed and sifted rock was even used back then. There were tons of different methods. Instead of water and white glue, a product called water glass was often used.

Funny story about what people use to use. So the other day looking through the original manual for lionel I have, there is a part about materials to build mountains and terrain out of. Anyways the materials needed were one part plaster to three parts asbestos. I showed it to the wife we both laughed thinking yeah good like trying to get that stuff now!!!!! Now its a hazardous material that is being removed from every building in the world. But if you think about it, it all makes sense. Think about it what do we use now that wont be able to ten, twenty years from now!!!!!

quote:

I remember it was called "mucilage". When's the last time you heard that word!

Jim;

Wasn't that made by "LePage"?

quote:

Originally posted by TexSpecial:
All the post war "home made" layouts in my area used only paints on the plywood. My neighbor built a 4'X16' Lionel layout and painted the whole thing green. Then, when it dried painted track roadbed brown and streets black. He glued down green sawdust stuff for grass. I remember the glue in the day, glass bottle with rubber tip and when you pressed down the glue would come out of a slit in the rubber. I believe my neighbor borrowed (????????) the glue from his school. No sound deadening in those days.....just pure fun.

TEX
Steve

My artist wife tells me one can STILL GET those glue bottles with the glue!

That's real retro, huh?

Rufus

quote:

Originally posted by SANTA FE 1953:
Funny story about what people use to use. So the other day looking through the original manual for lionel I have, there is a part about materials to build mountains and terrain out of. Anyways the materials needed were one part plaster to three parts asbestos. I showed it to the wife we both laughed thinking yeah good like trying to get that stuff now!!!!! Now its a hazardous material that is being removed from every building in the world. But if you think about it, it all makes sense. Think about it what do we use now that wont be able to ten, twenty years from now!!!!!

You are correct....we are retrying ourselves into extinction, or so it seems!

BTW, I still have several bags of that asbestos in my workshop...wouldn't someone
In our govt EPA like to dispose of that!

Rufus

Tru-scale, the makers of self-gauging and plain HO wood roadbed also offered a paint-on ballast, which seemed to be grey paint with some coarse sand in it. I tried it but it didn't look so good because no matter how much you mixed it the "ballast" grains were far and few between.

Pete

quote:

Originally posted by laming:
Hi DPC!

We have tons of it here, too. Almost all of it has extremely fine limbs/branches/whatever. Much of it would be "good enough" to use once pickled/colored without ground foam. Have thought many times about harvesting/pickling... but have you ever read the directions on how to pickle the stuff??? No way.

The "smell" I remember when opening a box of Life-Like lychen was probably from the pickling process mixed with the original lychen smell?

Re: Ballast...

There's some really fine granulated stuff used in the frac sand business that looks just like O scale cinders. I see it here locally where it's leaked out of hopper cars and caused mini-piles of it between the rails. I am thinking about gathering up several 1 lb coffee cans full for possible use "one of these days".

Andre

I think I could stand the pickling,
My grandmother who was polish and my mom would buy 8 to 10 bushels of cabbage.
We had a bunch of 15 and 20 gallon crocks that they made sauerkraut in. If you've ever smelled that stuff while it's "working" in those crocks a little deer moss aint gonna phase you at all.

David

Back in the fifties I remember a friend's father used black roofing tiles to simulate ballast. The tiles were then drapped over 2"x3/4" pine strips and nailed into place. Curved portions of track required a bit more work, cutting and trial and error fitting. But it looked pretty good.
I tried just cutting the tiles the shape of the track and putting them directly onto the grass mat that covered my train board. The results were passable, but just ok.

My apologies for using the term "roofing tiles". What I meant to write was "roofing SHINGLES".

ken, no need to apologize. Shingles are not unknown for roadbed. We all knew what you meant.

Btw you can edit your posts. I find myself doing it all the time here.

What about granulated cork? Does anyone still use this? I've decided to shift from Fastrack to Atlas for a combination of better looks and significant noise reduction. Knowing that hard ballast lets the noise creep back up I thought granulated cork might work at minimizing this.

I don't want to re-ignite another "noise" thread about homosote, track etc.

I seam to recall reading somewhere that it was a commonly used ballast "back in the day", but I've also heard it's a pain in the butt to use.

I'm always searching the scenery forum for ideas but any experience here would be great.

Allen,
Buddy you just reminded me of how old I really am, not a good thing Allen! I remember how we us to due exact what you explained, Lord I can't be this darn old. If these men today really did a retro layout it would look very child like, cause in the 40's & 50's it was meant to be that way, they were viewed as childrens toys back then.
PCRR/Dave

quote:

Originally posted by TrainPop:

quote:

I remember it was called "mucilage". When's the last time you heard that word!

Jim;

Wasn't that made by "LePage"?

not any more :-(