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Ballast question
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Jarrell, <br /> <br />You are going to get 1000 slightly different answers to your question as people such as myself will expand your topic to the more general question of how to ballast. In my experience most people are not careful enough in this process. Good ballasting will make the railroad look great, mediocre ballasting will make it look...... <br /> <br />Some tips based on my experience: <br /> <br />1. Get the ballast perfect before you even think of glue. Most people use too much ballast and end up scraping it off of everything later. Get your profile looking the way you want it. No rocks on the ties, no rocks stuck to the track. Contrary to popular belief, this process will take quite awhile. You might also experiment with different sizes, for HO I mix the WS fine and medium ballast to get a more scale looking appearance. How the ballast looks after you are done with this step, is how it will look when you are done glueing it down.. In others words, make it as good as you can, it won't improve in looks when you glue it. <br /> <br />2. Be careful around switches with the ballast and especially the glue. I paint the roadbed the color of the ballast in areas under the switches so if I don't get perfect coverage, it won't show. If you get too much glue here you will glue the throwbar in place. OOOOuch!!! <br /> <br />3. I use wet water (detergent in water) or alcohol as a wetting agent. Spray the agent up in the air and let it FALL on the ballast and roadbed like light fog or very gentle rain.. You don't want to disturb the beautiful job you did laying it out. If you spray direcly at it, the ballast will go flying everywhere. When things are wet, I go back in with the glue and soak the heck out of things (with the exception of turnouts). It will take days for the glue to dry. This is normal. <br /> <br />4. Practice on a test section to get the hang of it before you go for the stuff that counts. <br /> <br />Hope this helps.
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