Good source of Ballast

I am amazed that people will spend a fortune on track, use a quality roadbed, labor to get it straight and then put something substandard on to finish it.  Getting the right size granules is as important as the actual color.  If saving money on ballast is really important to you how about putting something really cheap down as a base like playground sand and then cover it with a fine layer of good quality ballast?  Hot water suggested this to me and I think it just makes a lot of good sense.  I'm not trying to make anyone feel bad, but I think this is the wrong place to try to save money.

 

Art  

I used roofing granuales. Inexpensive, right size... But it's slightly magnetic. Don't use with Magna-Traction! Iron compound helps resist mildew in roofing application.  $20 per 50 lbs.

I still haven't figured out where to get roofing granules locally. Nobody sells them loose.

Ballast is cheap enough that using liter or roofing materials or aquarium rocks just takes away from the look of the track. But again this comes down to a decision that we all have to make.

I buy all my ballast from Scenic Express. I have my own blend (7 oz. course iron ore,32 oz. course brown and 2 oz. course buff) that looks very similar to what the U.P. uses here in Eastern Iowa.

Dan

Dan - Do you have pictures you could post of yours.  It sounds like what I want to try to copy is the UP and BNSF in the Midwest.

 

Art

Big roofing supply houses sell it in 50 pound plastic tubs. Where I got my they only stocked white, but there are other colors available. Big box home stores don't carry it.

 

 

 

Use what works for you. Personally i find chicken grit, kitty litter, and aquarium gravel don't look very realistic to me. I find Dewey's and Trainman's use of roofing granules look great.

I used stone dust that i washed and screened which happened to come from the same rock crushing plant that Conrail and later CSX used as a source of their ballast. Seemed prototypical to me . Not having the deepest pockets, and preferring to spend my train budget on locos and rolling stock, the cost of the equivalent of over 100 coffee cans of commercial ballast would have been prohibitive!

 

jackson

Chugman, here are a couple shots, if you want something more close up let me know.

Dan

Art

Just information for you.

 

 I'm using fastrack and  I wanted to play with weathering the track and ballast. I picked up the roofing granules I ordered  from a local roofing company. Less expensive than some of the other products  I have looked at. I purchased Slate, black and white.  Also two samples of woodland coarse ballast, gray, brown. I can not see any difference in size at all in the two products with the exception that the roof granules weigh slightly more than woodland ballast when put in the same size container.

The picture from left to right. White, black, slate, then scenic coarse gray and brown.

I ended up mixing a small amount of scenic course gray with the slate and black until it suited me.

Larry

Hi LARRY,

   Looks real good I like it.  I have a question for you in regards to the putting ballast on the fasttrack.  Do you use the Elmers glue mixture?  And if I ever want to go back to the fasttrack can you get the track back to what it looked like before the ballast was applied?  Thanks for your reply.

That looks very good with the Fasttracks Larry.

Here are couple more from my layout.

Dan

Crushed granite works very well. Usually available from a granite/stone supplier. As a back up, chicken grit (with granite) also works very well and is very inexpensive.

Check your local quarry.  The one near my house used to ship roofing granules out by the bulk tanker full.  I'm not sure if they still supply the industry as the plant has changed hands three times since one of the trucks wrecked coming down a steep hill.

Not around here. They'll sell you any color of shingle coated with granules, but they don't sell them loose. I still haven't figured out what you would use loose granules for in a roofing application.

 

Now there is one place I haven't tried calling. There's a GAF shingle plant in North  Minneapolis. I KNOW they have them, because I seen them being delivered by the hopper load. The question is, will they sell me some?

Now that's an interesting idea! It just so happens there's a quarry about 40 minutes away. The rock that comes out of there would be most prototypical indeed, as they supply local railroads with a lot of their ballast. They also sell it for landscaping. It's a pretty blue gray.

Dan - Thanks a lot for the pictures.  It looks really good and has that Midwest brown cast to it.  Nice job!

 

Larry - Yours looks really good to me too.

 

Art

Is that indoor out door carpet also with the ballast. I was wondering how that would look since I have carpet. while I am at it here are some shots of my ballasted fast track very plane and steral looking I think but still learning.

You tar the roof (or apply elastomeric coating), then sprinkle liberally with the granules. A roof is more resistant to the weather with the the granules and can last much longer.

Companies specializing in flat roofs should have the granules in abundance if you can not find them elsewhere.

Thanks for clearing that up. I've never seen anyone use material that small on a flat roof around here. Flat roofs here tend to get half inch pebbles. It may be the climate with all the ice and snow.

Jhainer, the grass is Silflor 6-8mm summer pasture with weeds from Scenic Express.

laz57

Do you use the Elmers glue mixture?

 

No, I just spray it with scenic cement once , let dry, then a second time. It's very tough.

 

 

And if I ever want to go back to the fastrack can you get the track back to what it looked like before the ballast was applied? 

 

I'm going to say (scenic cement) I don't think completly. I have read some soak it in water but I have not done that. I think you would end up with useable stained track. Now, I have had a hard time getting elmers off on other little projects. Takes a lot of work. At least for me it did.

 

Larry

Here, here!!

 

We curmudgeons RULE!

 

KD

"chicken grit" is a little large for some folks so I have used CHICK grit which is of course a little smaller.  Petco and other pet stores carry it but if you have a feed store locally they have it in bulk.  It is decompossed granite flakes.  Russ

 

Here in Western Colorado I find these large ant hills.  2-3 feet diameter  ( the ants are just regular size ants, not sci-fi movie ants )  The ants bring up the sand grains that to me look just the right size for ballast.  I scooped up a 5 gallon bucket from several ant hills ( sorry ants )  Then sifted the finer dirt out with a small cheap kitchen sifter.

 

Steve

The best Brennan Better Ballast

 

 

Well, I think I hit pay dirt. I called the local quarry after checking their website and asked for what they call headlap (AKA roofing granules). I've never heard that term headlap before.

 

You can't say it's not prototypical, because this is what the real railroads use, in an O scale grind.

If anyone is interested I drove dump truck and the stone supply and asphalt plants have what is called dust. It starts out [size] from dust to 1/4 inch all I did was run it through a screen 1/16 inch holes used the bigger stuff for the bottom of rock faces and the 1/16 and smaller I washed the dust out on an old window screen let it dry. Most places sell dust by the ton so if they do ask you for money it might be only five bucks or so if you bring your own bucket. Choo Choo Kenny

Here is some fastrack ballasted with Brennans. I used diluted elmers brushed on the sides for first pass of ballast. The second layer was then coated with a diluted mix with alcohol. If you need to take the track up, the ballast will come off the track as elmers does not adhere to plastic; no water needed. Learned this from experience. The pictures show my template and typical result.

     All these options are great, but does it matter if the trains are not weathered? Just a question.

It's your railroad so it doesn't matter if you weather trains or not. I for one, have a great difficulty in taking the air brush and weathering powders to my purchased equipment. If I build the kit myself, I'll weather the heck out of it, but with the bought stuff... I just keep thinking that someday I may have to sell it and weathering really reduces the market size for used equipment. Or... do I have that completely wrong?

As for weathering, here is what I have observed. The list price or close to list that we pay always seems more than we ever get back on a resale. For modern electronic loaded engines it may become even a bigger drop as the new are more complex. Nicely weathered items seem to command a premium beyond even list price. After all the thought and effort that goes into track and scenery, why not complete the picture? Just another little opinion.

 

Ray Marion

The material I use for making ballast loads, (I don't have a layout), is the fine material called Moon Dust or Screening here in the Northeast, mentioned previously. I sift it through a window screen to separate the fines from the coarser material. I don't go the extra step of sifting out the powder. This material is about scale size. I use gray and red, as these are common to this area. I did an experimental mixture of gray and red, as I have seen this used as well. I have used actual ballast from a nearby local line and crushed it. It looks the same as the moon dust, without the labor of crushing. 

I get my material from the local building supply house in bags which hold about the same as a five gallon bucket for five bucks. If you can't find the material you're looking for in your area, crushing your own from real ballast is an option to consider. 

There was a man at York this past April that was selling metal free ballast. I am looking to see if anyone knows this person and can give me his contact information. I beleive this man was in the stone industry and said that most ballast material use in the model railroad hobby has metal in it. Consequently, the metal can be attracted by the magnetics in the engine and cause damage.

I could see that possibly being a problem, if there were any loose particles. This would also cause problems in the drive gears, metal or not. I'll have to take a magnet to the material I use and see if there is any attraction. Of course, this would only apply to steel. 
Don

Woodland Scenics coarse ballast -- I use a mix of Gray and Gray Blend -- seems to work okay with FasTrack.

 

 

- Mike

Used chicken grit on Mth realtrax.  It was a little to white so mixed up a workable bend of gray/black paint and applied with glue.  Worked really well, proved no mess or loose stones over time.  I like the look of it.  I think a 25lb bag was like $8

 

Don,

Please let me know what type of material you use and what you find. Thanks.

Elliot,

Roof Depot doesn't have them? They sell commercial roofing products.

I have to go to the grocery store today, and I drive right by there. I'll stop and ask. A while back my wife called them, and they said no.

Actually, it is a moot point now, because I located some at their source.

TA DA!!!



I now have 300 pounds of them in my garage.

 

UPDATE: I did stop at Roof Depot, and had a nice conversation with the guy there, and found out that they still make the shingles I have on my house. They are currently going for $85 a square. However they do not sell roofing granules. They are not used in this climate. Loose granules are a regional phenomenon, just like pink or blue foam sheets.

Weathered Brennans Better Ballast