Laying ballast - dark brown - so dark that I decided to lighten color with a wash of grey/tan paint. Thought I would try some limestone dust also to lighten. I decided I would prefer a lighter ballast color for the bulk of the layout and want to transition. One transition would be in a tunnel - so no problem there. The other under a double plate bridge.
Does anyone have multiple ballast colors and how did you handle transitions? Any secrets?
Thanks!
I've seen it on the prototype and it just abruptly changes.
In the case I'm thinking of it went from a rust-tinted dark slag ballast to a white-gravel ballast.
Problem is, such an abrupt change would probably look aesthetically awful on a layout.
Craig
DMW
I have light grey ballast on the main, tan ballast on the passing, station, and spur tracks, and cinders for the yard. Where they meet, I just blend them together for a few feet and it seems to look OK. Real railroads do make abrupt color transistions when they are either laying new ballast or just run out out of one type in the middle of a job. If you do a little mixing between the transitions, it looks pretty natural.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
First thing to do is a search for all the posts I've done on ballast and then spend a day or two reading them.
Distinct colours can be explained from the prototype and following their practice you can model it in a way that can look right.
First issue will always be what era you are working in. Can we assume that you are modelling a Class 1 road?
Early eras the RRs tended to get their ballast as locally as possible... they didn't always get good material... and learnt the hard/expensive way.
Step by step, depending on where the RR was and how well it was doing both locally and overall (if it was a big road) a RR could prosper and maintain high quality track or slide with resulting "defered maintenance". Some RRs did one then the other in cycles.
The two above situations could make various combinations.
You will need to decide which ballast colourhas been there the longer and at least one reason for the difference between materials.
As you have the dark stuff laid first it will probably be less work to say that this is the older ballast. The question is then whether the ballast is darker because it is a different material (from a different source/quarry), because it hasn't been kept paricularly clean... which is low if not poor maintenance, because it is old ballast... that has had a long time to get dirty, it has been made darker by some local condition... such as soot from factories OR any combiantion of these.
Why do you need this information?
Because 1. you want your layout to look good and 2. deciding these things will help you achieve that.
Obviously it is quite simple to decide that the lighter ballast is coming from a different source. Why has the RR changed supply? is it hauling it from further away... if so, how come it can afford the higher cost? It may be that the RR has been bought or merged and the new material is coming from the regular supply of the new owners... which may be nearer than the old owner's supply was... in which case you have a cheaper supply.
Cost of supply of the new stuff is very important... along with the health of the RR's finances at the time it affects ust how much new ballast goes in and the way that it goes in.
At one extreme the new stuff is more expensive (say because the old/cheaper quarry source has worked out and adequate quality stone is having to be hauled in a long way). At the same time trade is low so the RR isn't doing to well. Maybe it has struggled for some time and defered maintenance until it has to do something or get serious problems.
When this sort of situation applies the RR will do all it can to clean up and improve the ballast it has at the lowest cost possible. This will mean working on the worst patches... maybe only a few rail lengths at a time. They may even do just around a few ties, miss a bit, do a bit and so on. Within this patch and repair setup they will drop in new stone almost by the hand shovel full. If they are broke they will only be able to put in a minimum.
In fact, if they are really broke, the new stone may actually be inferior grade from a local source because they simply can't afforf the costs of the original better stuff. (Which goes contrary to everything I've set up so far ).
At the opposite extreme the RR may have just found itself sitting on a nice huge deposit of coal that is suddenly in demand. This will give the resources and reason to upgrade the track big time.
When this happens several things can occur. Good ballast will be bought in huge bulk where it is readily available. This may mean several different new colours... but you won't usually see too many of them at one place... you might see one or two (possibly mixed a bit) in the upgraded track while MoW trains are rolling over it with another colour to the next lot of track to be worked on... while some track remains in the older colours...
Track that is pretty good may be cleaned and "lifted"/re-lined. The secondd parts of this involve running in additional ballast... this can be different in colour/source from what is already there. The new material will be mixed in to a greater or lesser extent. the mix will actually tend to vary along the line. Where cleaning has pulled out a lot of the old ballast a proportionately greater amount of new stuff will have had to be put in. Obviously the less you take out the less you put back... unless you actually raise the grade with the new stuff... BUT... raising the grade is restricted by vertically fixed points... mostly bridges (both to get down onto an open deck and to get under) but also tunnels...
So what will be apparent here is a mix of colours/materials... and this doesn't have to be uniform.
As a rule new material will be more to the top, more mixed material in the middle and older material near the bottom... BUT there will be exceptions. One thing will be that a wsubsequent clean will have mixed things up further.
Sometimes, where the track isn't all that bad, new ballast will be dropped on top... frequently in distinct ridges - out one side, middle and out the other side... not necessarily all three at once - before the cleaning is done. This will have the new stuff just sitting on the existing formation. This can really stand out. The mixing will happen in the cleaning.
If that wasn't enough the ballast may be run over several miles in one hit. Cleaning is a slower process though and would take several hits for a long job. in that case you can have the new stuff sitting on top giving way to the cleaned and mixed material. Most cleaning machines need a lead-in. This often involves a space between ties having been cleared to get the working blade into the ballast. It wouldn't be unusual for the swap-over area to have a slow order on it for safety.
Um...where the new ballast has been dropped on one side only and mixed in with cleaning it may tend to show more on that side BUT the machine pulls everything out, chucks out the dirt, and stuffs the good back in without regard for specific patterns. Which raises the question of where the dirt goes... often straight onto the lineside if there is space and no-one is going to object. The dirt can be dropped as a ridge or flattened/spread around. Dirt can also be hauled away...
More simply new ballast from a single strip (wherever it is) will make less impact on the colour mix than new ballast from three strips...
You can get small stuff from the new ballast being dumped with the dirt... the management will not be very happy if there is much of this.
One thing that goes along with all this shuffling stone about is that tampers will be run to set the track where the engineers want it. They also have an affect on the appearance of the track. I've posted on that before. These days they also use stone blowers and formation shapers. A lot of this stuff is now Satnav guided. In the "good old days" this was all done by men with shovels.
If you are really feeling rich... or your track has to have it... you can "Deep Dig".
A Deep Dig goes as deep as you want it... including into bedrock.
With a deep dig you pull out all the track, send in dozers and backhoes and rip out everything you don't want. You then start building up specific layers as the engi
... and I didn't even mention ties...
Meanwhile, back at the OP...
A really sharp change can occur where two companies (or two Divisions of one company) meet. This can have been made out-of-date by history... where mergers or buy-outs have happened.
Part of getting the look right will be the over-all weathering. How uniform, or not, this is will depend on how long it is supposed to be since the last changes occured.
PS
You wouldn't normally change ballasting under a bridge... because you don't want any sudden changes in track condition / train ride under (or on) a bridge.
Similarly track maintemance would tend to run clear though any tunnel in one hit... obviously except for the very long tunnels that would need several hits.
The tunnel should be less of an issue for you... I imagine that you will only look at one end at a time.
Rather than try to hide a "JOIN" under a bridge I would look at some of the ideas I've waffled on about before...