Home made track ballast

Looks really good, ….let’s see it on your roadway, …..that’ll be the icing on the cake!..

Pat

Here are some pictures I took of the ballast I made on my layout. I'm not sure if it's prototypical, but it works for me!  :-)

Jeff good job . I like the natural look that you have created. The ballest looks like it belongs with your scenery.  So many times I see pictures of ballest track that it just does not look natural to artificial looking and to groomed.

Thank you for saying that. I actually have more fun doing scenery, etc, than actually running the trains.

i just replaced older 3 rail Lionel track and Lionel fastrack with Atlas O and Gargraves track. Need to ballast it now.

I will run my trains I had as a boy that are 60+ years old and still run great on that new track.

Would like to see more pictures of you layout. Yes I agree with building scenery.  I love doing it myself. Of course I am not to refined on detail.

Very nice work Jeff.

John

Per request of some pics of my layout. It's not prototypical, but it's great fun. Still (and always) a work in progress!

Not sure how the pics came out the way I have them posted. They look kind of small. Perhaps it would be better to choose the option to insert in post body? I've done a couple of them that way. Note the 2 inner most tracks were just put down and still need to be ballasted. As I said, always a work in progress!

Jeff,

What material did you use to run the powerlines between what appears to be MTH High Tension Towers?

That is one fantastic layout. Keep up the good work.

The powerlines are made from Heavy E Z Line from Berkshire Junction www.berkshirejunction.com. The "thread" stretches - so it has some give. I had to put very small pieces of tape on the powerlines in various places. It's a bit difficult to see the powerlines as my basement is not so greatly lit and I am afraid of bumping into them. And yes, they are MTH High Tension towers.

And thanks for the nice words Dylan. It's great fun.

BTW - I just completed installing the ballast on the 2 new inside tracks that replaced the Lionel traditional and Fastrack tracks. Wife is calling - so gluing tomorrow! :-)

Thanks much for posting this.    I did the same thing - purchased 5 gallon buckets of crushed granite at a landscaping supply yard,  screened it into different sizes.    It worked great for me, and with a 23 x 40 foot layout, I wasn't about to go out and spend significant sums on RR ballast..    I still have a lot of track to ballast, did it in sections which is the way I built the entire RR in Modules....   A couple of tricks that worked for me to get it more realistic looking and not so Blue and cold gray in color was to tint the diluted glue with Raw and Burnt Umber and  India Ink.    On the mine run, I also took out the inexpensive air brush and lightly weathered the ballast so it took on that earthy rusty color.   Tinting the diluted glue mix worked great as it made it easy to tint everything upon application.

Added a photo or two of the Steam Engine Service Facility and Coaling tower.... I really didn't want this area to be granite ballast, as most yards I have been in seem over the years to have far more dirt on the ground than fresh ballast, so I added a bunch of dark planting top soil that I screened to get all the large wood chips and clumps out, then typically microwaved it for a couple of minutes to kill anything that might be living in there.

Nice layout. I’ll try the dye thing.

Went on the Berkshire website and the purchase part does not respond. ???

Hmm - let me see if I can find the invoice. That may not have been where I actually purchased it.

Chris a,

I have a RR background. Any locomotive facility yard from the steam era to modern diesel will be void of ballast and be slathered with grease and oil from days gone past. A somewhat slick groundcover would do. For additional detail, using sawdust to cover sand near a loco layup is cool. We always tested the sanders on the engine before departure, leaving piles of sand on the ground. What a waste!

How did you apply the ballast? I've heard some people who like to lay the ballast before the track, and others who like to lay the track first; I'm about to start ballasting my layout and would like suggestions.

Very nice. Am I safe to say that you are into horses.  Also does this layout represent your area of the country? It reminds me of high desert type living. Thanks for sharing.

Chris, your ballast came out great. What caught my eye was the field grass. Can you share how you did it ? Looks like Woodland Scenics straw but it has a green tint to it.

For what it is worth. When I did ballast, I used a product called Cherry Stone, it is a product for chicken scratch. We sold lots of this when I was in the feedmill business. This stone is granite and has the pinkish look I wanted, as around here we call it "pink lady" used by the C&NW in fact they pulled such rock out of a quarry in Rock Springs, Wisconsin. Therefore I wanted "pink lady" for my roadbed. In this case I used the finest grade available, known a chick scratch. You will see for your selves that I think it looks good here in the mid-west. I did not use a road bed for the profile. What I did was using Gargraves track, I dumped the rock and let it flow naturally from the ties downward, and feel I got the look. Attached is a photo of me applying way back in 2017. Then a 50-50 mix of water and white glue, first spritzed the rock with water and a couple of drops of dish washing liquid, first, and then the glue mixture just flowed over the rock.

I'd much rather spend money on trains, not ballast.

I'm using various floral gravels on my layout. Black for the roadbed (from Dollar Tree), and gray or brown on sidings. The black is a little bit big but IMHO it looks good.
The other products came from Michaels Arts and Crafts.

The yard was done with a fine black gravel. I was going for the grimy look that @452 Card mentioned. After ballasting, I went over everything with a wash of dark acrylics (black, brown, red). Added some fine turfs and sand too.

Most of my layout is 027 tubular but I used some fastrack for a small yard. I covered the sides with silver/ gray gravel to hide the plastic sides.

These are the fine gravels I use. They are a bit shiny, but a wash of acrylics or a shot of spray paint knocks it down.

Bob

Great Work @JEFFREY RUCKGABER 050219.  Like @RSJB18, I like to spend money on trains.  So, I sweep my ballast from the street.  Washing it all well in a 5-gallon pail and then sifting it to get uniform size.

I went to two areas in town where we have tracks.  The NS main from Harrisburg to Hagerstown and another NS area where local freight is delivered to get an idea of look and size.

Through the sifting process, I can get three different sizes of rock.

Here are some of the areas I did.

A mix of medium and small.

It even looks great as a gravel road in a campground.

Sometimes I lay some out on a board and spray paint the granules to get a different look.

I'm not sure how to directly send a message to someone, but this is to reply to 452 Card about the EZ line I use for my powerlines. I checked my invoices and I purchased it from Showcase Miniatures. There's an email address: dshowcaseminiatures.net.

Three spools of 100 feet each cost $47.00.

Thanks for all the posts and input on ballast. Everyone's looks great. If I expand my layout again - which I probably will - I'll try some of these techniques as well. There certainly seems to be multiple ways to "skin the cat" and done so rather cheaply.

Dave_C -   It's amazing to me what a good quality camera picks up, that's not always obvious to the naked eye.   It's been more than a few years since I did that section, but here's what I have to offer.   

Yes there is a "green" tint....   From looking at the area with my magnifiers on, it looks like I first laid down a base layer of shorter green static grass, then went back and did the longer beige wild grass.    I remember watching a bunch of YouTube videos back then of Kathy Millat from the UK.   She's the one that sold me on the multiple Layer Static Grass method.   

Can't tell what the base layer is, but I am guessing it's pretty bright spring summer grass probably around 2.5 to 4 mm long,  the long wild beige grass is  NOCH 07111, Wildgras, XL, beige (12 mm ) .  I also remember, sprinkling some really fine sifted dark dirt into the grass, but intermittently not unform, and I think I did this last, but the memory isn't as good as it used to be.

I purchased a nice Noch ( I believe) Static Grass applicator with like 8 to 10 bags of grasses from an OGR forum member probably like 2018....    This 12 mm Beige Wildgras, was one of the products that came with the whole set up.   

NOTE:  The shorter grass has to be the "base" layer.  Over time, the other thing I do is I rarely ever put down a pure mix of only one grass when I do the static grass application.   I don't have any Augusta National golf course quality grass scenes on this model RR.

Dave_C, check your email,  I sent you an email yesterday about coming to visit !!!   Chris

Oh MY !  You can get EZ Line from Model Train Stuff for $8.75 per 100'.  Even Amazon has it for around $9 something. 

Next time you are at an ag store, check out the grit used for birds.  It usually comes in several grades of coarseness and color, and compared to a bag of branded hobby ballast, is a steal.

Thanks Jeff.

Oh well - I did not shop around very much for the EZ line. That said, I now have more than I’ll ever need. But - if I ever need more, I will shop around. Thanks for the input.

@JEFFREY RUCKGABER 050219 Your layout is awesome! Thanks for the great idea for DIY ballast!

Another idea that was discussed recently was to use polymeric sand. Used to set paver bricks in place, it's comes in a variety of colors and only needs water to activate the polymers. It dries as hard as concrete.

https://alliancegator.com/gato...erial/gator-maxx-g2/

Comes in 40# bags @ about buck/ pound

Bob

@JEFFREY RUCKGABER 050219

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@CALNNC posted:

Next time you are at an ag store, check out the grit used for birds.  It usually comes in several grades of coarseness and color, and compared to a bag of branded hobby ballast, is a steal.

I had gone to the local Tractor Supply and looked at chicken grit but did not see any that particularly appealed to me so I went back to an old stand-by that I had used many years ago; unscented, non-clumping cat litter.

Another idea is speedy dry.  I sifted some and used the medium and small particles for this yard.

The only issue is when I sprayed wet water on it pryor to the diluted Elmer's gue, the water disappeared almost immediately.

So I decided not to glue any of this.  So far so good.

Ron

@JEFFREY RUCKGABER 050219 posted:

Oh well - I did not shop around very much for the EZ line. That said, I now have more than I’ll ever need. But - if I ever need more, I will shop around. Thanks for the input.

I checked out that website. The black EZ Line was the same price I paid. There are others that are cheaper, but not the black.

try roofing granuals, the small crushed stone they uses  on shingles, come in deferent colors  red grey brown black white and others , comes in big bags, 40 - 60 lbs  can be found at roofing supply stores .  You can screen off the largest  and use then as sceanery

Harry Henning uses the roofing granules for ballast, they look great.  As mentioned, you can get them in all sizes and colors, they WAY cheaper than buying little jars of sand!

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

Harry Henning uses the roofing granules for ballast, they look great.  As mentioned, you can get them in all sizes and colors, they WAY cheaper than buying little jars of sand!

Here are a couple of pictures of the roofing granules I use. In my opinion one of the biggest mistakes people make when they are trying to create scale looking scenes on their layouts is to use over sized ballast. When you look at pictures of real railroads from what I would call "normal viewing distance," you can barely if at all see the individual stones. The last picture is of the container the granules come in.

Anyone ever try decomposed granite (DG) used for landscaping?

IMHO - a lot depends how realistic/prototypical you want to make things look. In most cases, we’re dealing with 3 rail versus 2 rail track anyway. I guess I’m taking a little political license when it comes to my ballast. My main goal is to not have to pay for stuff if I don’t need to - hence my trip to my local quarry rather than to landscaping (or other) supply store.