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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. <img src="http://i168.photobucket.com/albums/u172/dcrane_2007/DSC02463.jpg" style="max-width: 550px;" border="0" /> The double line down to the turnouts in the distance here took about six hours at least. <img src="http://i168.photobucket.com/albums/u172/dcrane_2007/ballast.jpg" style="max-width: 550px;" border="0" /> 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.
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