Track question

[Allegheny2-6-6-6]

 I can't say with 100% certainty but that looks like black ciders, do to the puddles and imperfections It doesn't look like blacktop to me.

I have something similar in my engine servicing terminal all I did was use blacks sand the stuff used for sand art as a base for the ground cover and went over it and the tracks with Arizona Rock & Mineral fine black cinders. You see ties in most of the yard but there are spots where all you see are the rails.

As far as maintenance goes. I could be wrong but I think the facility or in your case steel mill would be responsible for something like that.

Here are a couple of pics of a steel mill module I saw at a train show, It was being displayed by Peach creek shops. These guys are all things steel mills I have found them and Dean Freytag

http://www.peachcreekshops.com/index.php?UID=2009091000065471.187.217.19

 

 

 

[wedudler]

 I've made for plaster a scraping tool.You find more at my HowTo.

 

Wolfgang

[ssgauge]

I goofed...what I meant to say was "dug up the track and replaced the ties."

[jeffrey-wimberly]

 Ever heard of street running? Do it the same as you would a trolley track.

[ssgauge]

I've modeled track buried in soil.  I used real, fine-grained soil and fixed it with a 50/50 white glue/water mix, just like I use for fixing ballast.  Immediately, while the soil was still loose and wet, I cleaned off the rail tops and used a small screwdriver to clear flangeways.  It is important that the soil level be slightly below the height of the rail.  When the soil dried, I sanded off any high points or out-of-scale clumps.

As far as maintenance, I've seen prototype track like this both before and after maintenance was performed.  In this particular case the track had sunken into the soil over the course of many years and was in pretty rough shape.  It was crooked with a lot of rises and dips.  Eventually, since the particular spur was still in use, the railroad (the Camas Prairie in Lewiston, Idaho) dug up the track and replaced the track.  I guess that would be the only way to do it.

[ccaranna]

What is the best way to model track as in this picture below? I would like to recreate the look of ties that are submerged into the ground so that only the railheads are showing. I'm modeling a steel mill where spurs around the complex have very slow moving trains, and most of the pictures I've seen have track like this photo. Also, how do railroads perform maintenance on track like this?