On the 10th installment of building my model railroad, I have a smaller yard with engine servicing facilities. I am going for the look of the N&W picture, that shows the Roanoak shops that used to be the Atlas track ad in Model Railroder magazine way back when. My question is: would the track at the yard and that area have nice clean ballast, or be rails in the dirt? Thanks.
I went back to the thread you started about finding that ad, from MRR, and took a look at the photo Ed linked to, and it appears to me, when the track around the shops was originally put down, it had regular ballast/stone for a base, to take the load of the equipment being driven on it, but over time, weeds and grass started to show up, and it didn't get the maintainence that the main lines would have got.
I don't think it would be just dirt, as dirt wouldn't be a suitable base for the weight of the equipment. It looks more like weeds and grass growing over the stone and ballast, and since the ballast wouldn't get the regular cleaning that a main line would get, over time, it could look like some dirt was there.
Mike.
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I agree completely with you Mike, thanks for the re-assurance. "Once it was nice, but now...well..."
I would suspect that the yard isn’t going to be the most maintained section of the railroad. So irregardless of what the original base was, that won’t stay for long. I would guess at areas where vehicles and people would more likely move over, and add less weeds there, while add more weeds in less frequented areas.
In the end you are trying to satisfy yourself so do what’s looks good to you. I would start light, and add more later if needed. They always say it’s easier to add more than to take some away!
Prototype pictures are very helpful, follow them if you get lost. And speaking of prototype pictures, if someone could put the lino to the picture Mike referenced that would be nice!
Hope this was helpful!
Regards, Isaac
I model my railroad and you model yours! I model my way and you model yours!
The photo was a link provided by the courtesy of Ed, (gmpullan) in a thread started by N.C.& St.L., in the Prototype Forum, inquiring about an Atlas ad on the back cover of an older issue of MRR.
http://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=90769
It is about an exact match to the ad that the OP was looking for, except trains are going in a different direction.
The thread was started about 8 days ago. It's still there.
N.C.&St.LMy question is: would the track at the yard and that area have nice clean ballast, or be rails in the dirt? Thanks.
The main thing about a yard is that there be smooth footing for brakemen and others walking around, often in pitch darkness. That is why you tend not to see the same kind of casual debris (bits of old ties, loose tie plates or spikes, etc) left sitting around in a yard that you might see along even a well maintained main line.
That also means that while on the main line the the ballst comes up to about, or just shy of the top of the middle of the tie but the tops of the ends of the ties are as a rule exposed and are a few inches above ballast level, in yards they generally wanted a seamless and even ballast that came right to the tops of all ties, for the entire length of the tie.
For that reason the ballast if there was any in yards tended (and still tends) to be smaller than mainline ballast, perhaps gravel rather than rocks, and is applied differently, without that mainline slope in ballast level from middle of tie out to the ends of tie.
In steam days and for a few years after they almost always used cinders as ballast in yards, which is comparatively fine, more coarse than beach sand but not by much. Sometimes they also used foundry slag. Both cinders and slag did a pretty good job of drainage and deterring vegetation.
In Milwaukee's Butler Yard (C&NW, now UP) for example, they ballasted it with small chips of the famous pink lady ballast, rather than the chunks of pink lady ballast used on the main. And again the level matched the tops of the ties exactly so there was nothing to trip over.
In that sense tightly compacted dirt, while less than optimal from a drainage standpoint, might be safer than large ballast in a yard. Cinder ballast was somewhat dirt-like in appearance by the way.
It is difficult and thus rare to take an important part of a yard out of service so the ballast can be refreshed or cleaned as on the mainline using the machines that exist to do that task. They do take care that the yard remains well drained and free of vegetation (which is both a symptom of a drainage problem and a cause of drainage problems) so they usually address problem areas on a spot basis.
I cannot speak for every railroad but in my experience, the ballast in most yards is smaller, is cleaned and replaced only when and where needed, and debris and vegetation are both avoided.
Dave Nelson
Thank you Dave, this is excellent information. In modern times I have been able to walk around the northern part of Radnor Yard in Nashville. It was - at the time (1982) "manicured". By comparisom several smaller yards around where I live are "track in the dirt" yards.