I don't know why I can't get it right but my ballasting always looks like crap. Does anyone have any play by play help? I've looked at how to's but mine never has even edges or spreads evenly between the ties even though it's medium ballast on ho scale track which is a good size. Please help?!
Here's a link to part one of a four part series on how to ballast.
How to Ballast Model RR layouts
Marlon
See pictures of the Clinton-Golden Valley RR
One thing is don't try too hard. Let the rocks lay where they fall.
People try to place the ballast where they want it. The best thing to do is pile it up in the middle of the track and take a brush or other and sweep down the track . The ballast will naturally fall to the sides.
Springfield PA
Hamltnblue One thing is don't try too hard. Let the rocks lay where they fall. People try to place the ballast where they want it. The best thing to do is pile it up in the middle of the track and take a brush or other and sweep down the track . The ballast will naturally fall to the sides.
You mean all this time I have been doing it wrong by placing every grain by hand using tweezers.
Johnnny_reb Once a word is spoken it can not be unspoken!
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ROTFLMAO , good one, Johnny
I could use help here myself. My PC is too slow to load the video. Nice tip on the Pledge. I used a fairly large syringe with a long needle (more like a small tube) to apply a 50/50 white glue and water mix directly between and in front of the ties. Then took the cap from a spray paint can and drilled a small hole on the bottom of it. I tilt the lid back and added ballast. Then tilt it forward to the hole and tapped it with my finger to slowly pour the ballast out. Was still quit messy and had to brush off the excess. But was my first attempt at it.
Look at the prototype. How even is it?
Dave
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
Johnnny_reb You mean all this time I have been doing it wrong by placing every grain by hand using tweezers.
RF&Prr ROTFLMAO , good one, Johnny
You forgot a step.....dipping each grain in glue PRIOR to placement on the roadbed!
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When you dip the individual grains in glue, only get glue on the underside of the grains. Otherwise you'll spend too much time cleaning your tweezers, and you'll spend hours ballasting your track.
Seriously, to the OP, are you using a technique which involves spraying anything, either "wet water" or glue? Don't do that. It's messy and hard to control. Spread the ballast and use a soft brush to move the ballast off the top of the ties. I use a pipette (hobby version of an eyedropper) to apply isopropyl alcohol straight from the bottle as "wet water." The pipette allows you to precisely target the ballast only, and you can see the wet water flow through and darken the ballast. Then I add glue from the applicator bottle. I take an old Elmers bottle, fill it 1/4 full with glue, and fill the rest with water. Shake thoroughly, and you've got a convenient applicator bottle with a good tip for applying the glue.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
PennCentral99 Johnnny_reb: You mean all this time I have been doing it wrong by placing every grain by hand using tweezers. RF&Prr: ROTFLMAO , good one, Johnny You forgot a step.....dipping each grain in glue PRIOR to placement on the roadbed!
Johnnny_reb: You mean all this time I have been doing it wrong by placing every grain by hand using tweezers.
RF&Prr: ROTFLMAO , good one, Johnny
Not dipping each grain in the glue, You're suppost to use that Mico/ micro eyedropper.......
I hope you're not paying attention to our foolery here. Modelers have developed so many varying methods to ballast. You seem to have done your homework and with continued experience should start to find what works best for you..
I picked up tips from some veteran modelers @ the club. With these and my own trial and errors came up w/ what I found works good for me. Different types(material) of the ballast and size plays a role in how it lays and spreads. The WS ballast isn't stone (dyed walnut shell or something) and is somewhat light in weight. AZ Rock, Scenic Xpress etc, is real stone and will settle/ spread differently. For the prototype we model, I prefer a mix of materials WS fine (gray) and Scenic Xpress just about 50/50 mix. Before I bassast a select spot, I will paint on white glue. full strength w/ small foam brush to the roadbed shoulder and sprinkle on the ballast. This is one troubling spot for me in the past. The ballast profile used to always be a mess w/ piles of ballast never staying but to my liking. By applying glue first, and ballasting the shoulder, you can gain control of the exact placement and look to the ballast slope to scenery. I do like to ballast first then finish the surrounding scenery. Others do the opposite. The edge can alwast be doctored up after. This pre ballasting gives a slighjt dam as you do the remaining ballast between the rails. Using a small plastic spoon or folded card stock, I place ballat between the rails. With experience, you get to know the amounts so not to place too much. It get difficult to move/ remove way to much excess. I find that a small brush (and you will find a favorite) works great to sweep the ballast. Those "flux" brushes work good as well. This is where you get good at it with time. Shape and play w/ it. Tapping on the benchwork or rails helps in settling the grains. Blowing on the ballast at a sharp angle works good too to get those stray grains off the ties. Real stone will usually leave a dust residue on the tie tops, I don't worry about this as it tends to help w/ a weathered look. When wetting the ballast, I like to use a wet water, mostly water alcohol, you could use detergent but not nec since the alcohol does the job of breaking that surface tension anyway. I find that a very good spray bottle w/ adj nozzle to gain the Xtra fine spray. At first allow to mist and only rain down on the ballast. As you get the ballast "wetter", you can direct the spray more to the ballast. You do need to get it fairly wet to allow proper glue penetration. I apply white glue diluted w/ water and alcohol. This is wher you can use matte medium instead. White glue will resoften/ dissolve to ever remove track. Matte medium is very tough to do this later. White glue will dry hard as compared to the matte medium which stays a bit rubbery. This has effect of sound transmission as trains run. You can decide which to use. I apply glue w/ a small Elmer's bottle ( one w/ twist orange lid), Pipette or eyedropper works great also. One thing about white glue is it can leave a slight shine to the finished job.
Before ballasting, do all the track/ rail and tie weathering. After ballasting you can further weather and stain the ballast/ ties to show the accumulated oil/ coal staining of ballast/ tie. This especially true for yards and sidings, where motive power will do all that serious switching or sitting.
Hopes this helps you out w/ your dissapointment in your ballasting practices.
here's a look of the "real" thing we try to model
Modeling B&O- Chessie Bob K. www.ssmrc.org
Bob, I use a small spice bottle with a shaker top. I fill it with ballast, then slide it along the rails. Ballast fills between the rails and along the sides. Then, I groom it with a cheap 1" paint brush, making sure to keep it from the rail web. Wet it with alcohol in a spray bottle. I found that plant misters from the garden section at WalMart has a much finer mist than the cheap cleaning spray bottles. Then, I affix it with a 60/40 mix of water/white glue. I apply the glue with one of those bottles used for condiments. For precise control, I use a medicine dropper.
Let me say up front that I HATE ballasting track..... but it's got to be done.
However, the previous poster who says don't use a sprayer probably hit closest to the #1 problem beginners have with doing scenery in general, ballast or otherwise.
Since our scenery materials are very light, spraying them with anything tends to blast the little particles around, creating clumps and holes. I use a sprayer to pre-wet areas where scenery will be applied, but for the actual application of scenery materials, I use an old glue bottle to dribble the stuff on after the scenery materials are applied.
For ballast, I actually do use a spray bottle to apply dilute rubbing alcohol (50/50; or 35% concentration because the store bought stuff is already 70% concentration). But I don't spray AT the ballast, but over it so that he mist falls down on the ballast. If you do use a sprayer, you need to use a good, hard pull on the trigger so that the solution is thoroughly atomized (IOW, small drops rather than big ones).
Also, if you do have some holes later, you can always go back and patch.
Other than that, I use similar techniques to people above, although I use a 1/2" soft brush for between the rails and a 1" foam applicator for the outsides.
Connecticut Valley Railroad A Branch of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford
"If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right." -- Henry Ford
Rubbing alcohol and the pre-wetting are the KEY to precenting washouts. I use alcohol to pre-wet PLUS dilute the glue, as the 'old way' of using a drop or two of dish soap simply does not work with the hard water we have around here. I suppose I could buy distilled water and use that, but it's really no more expensive to buy store brand 70% alcohol and use that for the glue dilution. It's a slow and tedious process, and ranks right up there with painting the rails for me, but eventually it will all get done. Just do a little bit at a time, if you are starting to bug out stop and quit for the night or otherwise you will start makign mistakes and get more frustrated.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
We aren't sure why brand of ballast your are using but if it's Woodland Scenics, it's made from ground pecan shells which makes it very light, and can be difficult for some folks to work with. (assuming you are using wet water to completely saturate the ballast before your water/white glue mixture). Some people use Arizona Rock and Mineral ballast, which is real rock, and doesn't have the tendency to float around on you. Scroll down to view the many different colors and sizes.
Just a suggestion, your mileage may vary.
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http://gearedsteam.blogspot.com/
My ballasting improved greatly when I switched to a ballast manufactured from real rock, like that from Arizona Rock & Mineral Co. I've been told the Woodland Scenics ballast is made from ground up nut shells (walnut maybe?), and is lighter and more prone to moving around when wetting and gluing.
Not knocking the Woodland Scenics products at all, in fact I'd say I needed the heavier ballast material to make up for my less than stellar techniques.
I see GearedSteam and I were posting the same thoughts at pretty much exactly the same time!
i just started ballasting my track last week. this is ho scale using fine ballast. first i use is a spray can top to tap out the ballast onto the ties, not to much, acces takes more time to get the extra out. just get enough to get started and then go back and tap more out if needed. then i use a eye dropper with straight rubbing alcohol and drip that onto the ballast. then i use a 50/50 mix of elmers and water and use the elmer bottle to drip very lightly onto the ballast. i do 6" at a time with the alcohol and gluing. dont want the alcohol to dry before the glue mixture dripped on. after it all dries i go back and fix any places the ballast moves and leaves a bare spot. and pick out any stray pieces.
heres a pic.
later
g
FB page of my layout *new*
https://www.facebook.com/ghglines
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thread to my layout
http://www.warcrc.net/forum/showthread.php?t=10505
pics
http://s237.photobucket.com/user/rockcrawling/library/#/user/rockcrawling/library/ho%20scale%20trains?sort=3&page=1&_suid=1388183416990004180295067414064
I'm going to repost this video that I linked in another ballast thread:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_r472H_eYmg&feature=related
This looked cool enough for me to buy the back copy of MR to get the plans to build the tool. I haven't tried it yet, but it's on my (ever growing model train) to-do list..
-Ed
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit." -Aristotle
Yes, tired is the operative word!
last month I finished ballasting the addition to my layout. I have yet to ballast the original section.
It took me a week or so to find the technique I liked best and then it took an entire month of ballasting on average 4 hours a day to complete about 200 feet of track and 20+ turnouts. That's 120 hours. That's about 1.6 feet per hour.....and that is correct.
I won't go into the technique I thought best. My point is, it takes a lot a lot of time. Especially perhaps when using that lightweight WS medium ballast that I used. It takes a long time to brush each tie off and then the ends of each tie on both sides, and push the grains around just right.
For example, I'd say the section of double track seen below took about five hours to do. That was fast because there were no turnouts.
The double line down to the turnouts in the distance here took about six hours at least.
But a tip to save yourself some time. Don't bother to clean the ties off in yards or sidings very well. These are left with lots of ballast scattered on top (at least in my town) because the train speeds are low and no worry about throwing ballast up onto hoses and equipment. Save the finiky super clean work for ties on the main line. And there the tops of the ties should be almost absolutely clear of ballast...at least in my town.
I found that mixing the Woodland Scenics ballast with real sand, or Arizona Rock & Mineral accomplishes two things:
I see Arizona Rock & Mineral Co. is up for sale, hope someone keeps their great product line going.
I've used Highball Products ballast as well and got great results with it.
Medina1128 I found that mixing the Woodland Scenics ballast with real sand, or Arizona Rock & Mineral accomplishes two things: It aids in preventing the ballast from moving around when sprayed/glued. It allows you to ballast twice the amount of track.
Marlon, It is a good "trick" doing this mix. I came upon the WS/ real stone mix during various experiments before settling on ballast for most of the club's mainlines. Better control, stretched the ballast and provided that salt and pepper look to the granite stone we wanted.