HO Ballast - Fine, Medium, or Coarse?

[Anonymous]

I just got my WS ballast in yesterday and I was curious what grade of ballast others use for their HO scale layout.  15 years ago, on my first HO layout, I used medium ballast and always felt it looked too big.  This time around I ordered the fine ballast and when looking at it, it looks awfully small.  One of the reasons I chose fine ballast is because I will be ballasting Kato Unitrack and I read somewhere that fine ballast goes best with this type of track.  Has anyone else ever heard that?

Anyway, what grade of ballast do you use for your HO layout - fine, medium, or coarse?

[nfmisso]

It depends on what is being simulated.  Heavy duty mainline uses coarser ballast.  The lighter duty gets smaller, and some very low grade sidings are dirt and weeds.  Take a look at prototype pictures, and compare to pictures that you take of track that you have ballasted.  You may want to take a couple sections of track, and ballast each with a different grade of ballast for your initial comparison photos.

[tstage]

Surf, 

For a more prototypical look in HO, fine ballast is what you want.

Tom 

[D&HRR]

Surf, 

For a more prototypical look in HO, fine ballast is what you want.

Tom 

I agree

[brothaslide]

Perhaps coarse N scale ballast will be a good fit.  I'm guessing that it would be between fine and medium HO ballast.

[P & LE RR]

im a believer in medium ballast for my ho layout... the fine is just too tiny in my opinion for track ballast... makes great crushed gravel for areas of the layout though.

[metalfrog]

im using medium woodland scenic's ballast.it look's ok but in year's past i used campbell's ballast which is much smaller than the medium size ballast.don't know if campbell's still produce their ballast or not.terry..........

[fiatfan]

I'm using a mixture of fine and medium but my next layout will be all fine ballast.  Much closer to scale.

 

Tom 

[jecorbett]

The mainline tracks in my area use large rock ballast that I believe is best simulated by WS light gray coarse. I don't like to use it between the track though so I use medium in between the tracks. For secondary tracks I use medium outside the rails and fine in between. You would have to look very close to tell that there are two sizes being used. For industrial spurs that are lightly ballasted or set in the ground, I use mixtures of fine ballast and WS soil to achieve the look I want. Expierimenting makes this task fun.

[larak]

I filter local sand through a kitchen strainer for my mains. The sizes are approximately WS medium and smaller.

Both the mix of sizes and natural color variation look good to me. Also five gallons of the stuff cost nothing but some time. I used WS medium grade on a short interchange track. It looks just a bit too large and the color is far too uniform. 

I always thought that ballast was pretty consistent until I happened to check the Hudson River East shore line near Hyde Park. There were at least five colors and a couple of sizes. The west shore is a couple of shades and a couple of sizes. 

You might want to experiment with a mix. Also some modelers use n-scale ballast for HO.

Good luck,

Karl

 

[orsonroy]

For HO scale, I use Woodland Scenics fine ballast...or finer.

When I wondered what size of ballast I should be using on my layout a few years ago, I did something that few of us think of: I went to the source and measured real ballast. Well, I at least compared the size of real ballast on several mainlines to the size of my fist. Once I had determined that ballast should be between 1/4 and 1/3 the size of my fist, and also compared the stuff to my shoes, I went back to the basement and poured out piles of WS fine and medium ballast, and started stuffing HO scale figures into it.

Medium ballast is WAY too large for HO, with the stuff being almost as large as scale figures heads, and WAY larger than their fists. Fine works much better.

But here's a problem: for us period modelers, fine is still too large for some applications, especially in yards and light-use spurs, which were generally ballasted with cinders, which are REALLY fine. Looking at perod photos of engine facilities and yards, the "ballast" looks more like mud. I'm still not sure quite how to model this grayish, blackish, greasy-looking mess, but I've got ideas about crushing fine ballast and mixing it with real dirt, and then painting the surface with oily black and other "colors of interest". I'll see how well my plans work once I get to that point with my new layout.

[NS2591]

For our clubs HO Layout yard. I used Arizona Rock & Mineral Co. N scale cinders. I highly recamend their ballast to anyone. In any scale!

[orsonroy]

For our clubs HO Layout yard. I used Arizona Rock & Mineral Co. N scale cinders. I highly recamend their ballast to anyone. In any scale!

Buy it now. The business is winding down and soon to close, as reported on this forum about a year ago!

[orsonroy]

For our clubs HO Layout yard. I used Arizona Rock & Mineral Co. N scale cinders. I highly recamend their ballast to anyone. In any scale!

Buy it now. The business is winding down and soon to close, as reported on this forum about a year ago!

[jecorbett]

For HO scale, I use Woodland Scenics fine ballast...or finer.

When I wondered what size of ballast I should be using on my layout a few years ago, I did something that few of us think of: I went to the source and measured real ballast. Well, I at least compared the size of real ballast on several mainlines to the size of my fist. Once I had determined that ballast should be between 1/4 and 1/3 the size of my fist, and also compared the stuff to my shoes, I went back to the basement and poured out piles of WS fine and medium ballast, and started stuffing HO scale figures into it.

Medium ballast is WAY too large for HO, with the stuff being almost as large as scale figures heads, and WAY larger than their fists. Fine works much better.

But here's a problem: for us period modelers, fine is still too large for some applications, especially in yards and light-use spurs, which were generally ballasted with cinders, which are REALLY fine. Looking at perod photos of engine facilities and yards, the "ballast" looks more like mud. I'm still not sure quite how to model this grayish, blackish, greasy-looking mess, but I've got ideas about crushing fine ballast and mixing it with real dirt, and then painting the surface with oily black and other "colors of interest". I'll see how well my plans work once I get to that point with my new layout.

Try mixing WS Fine Cinders with their Soil ground cover. They are roughly the same color and blend well together. I've used it around my engine terminal  and also on some industrial spurs. I've even mixed in a little bit of Fine Gray ballast to it to give it a little texture. This mixture does an excellent job of binding the track and looks good too.

[45T-2]

I'm modling Southern Pacific in southern California.  I use the Arizona rock and mineral SP gray ballast. In the past I've always used the WS, but have been VERY pleased with the Arizona brand. The rocks seem to have a less uniform size as compared to the WS stuff. As soon as I laid it down, it screamed "prototype" to me! I also seem to have less "floating" issues when pre-wetting it.

 

Rich

[jeffrey-wimberly]

I use fine with some medium thrown in.

[Anonymous]

Well that's interesting, fine ballast seems to be the general consensus (or at least fine to medium).  As my opening post stated, I used medium on my first layout and thought it was too big.  I took a real good look at my fine ballast and I must agree that it looks very good.

I like that idea of putting a scale figure in the ballast!  Some of the ballast I've seen in real life is as small as the gravel you often see used in driveways.

I bought fine cinder for my yard and service area, fine brown for the Putnam Division mainline and fine gray for the Harlem Division mainline.  I did my research on the net and those were the colors I found that were used by my prototypes.  I found it odd that two divisions of the same railroad used two different colors (or types) of ballast.  They were only a few miles away from each other.  Nonetheless, it'll make for good modelling.

[topcopdoc]

I use WS fine ballast for the main line but it is too large for the yard. I searched around but could not anything small enough.

I finally found just the right size and color I needed. I went to the rock quarry and got a pail of "blue stone dust." I filter it once with mesh from a screen door and then through a flour sifter that my wife is still looking for. The rock left from the first filtering I use as "riprap" around the mountain base. The rock left from second filtering is about the size of coarse ballast and I use it on river bed edges.  

Doc

[Dave-the-Train]

When new out of the rock face ballast is screened to pass through a 2" ring.  I don't know what the minimum size is, I should think 1.75" these days.

The real RR problem is finding stone that doesn't get smaller too quickly.  Limestone and granite are the favourites for this.  Really hard  broken slag and some Gneises have also been used where they are/have been available in quantity.

When ballast is cleaned all the too small stff is cleaned out and got rid of.

Just what your ballast wants to look like will depend on where it is in the maintenance cycle... see my earlier posts in this and the old forum.

For H0 I would use fine WS ballast - of appropriate colours - with a % of smaller stuff as appropriate for the effect you want.

[nbrodar]

I prefer Medium ballast for HO.   While it's not strictly prototypical is size, to my eye it "looks" more right then Fine.   Plus, I use Fine ballast for gravel roads and pathways, and like the visual contrast between the fine and medium.

 Nick

[Anonymous]

I use a hand powered sausage grinder to grind up aqarium filter charcoal for coal loads in loco tenders & 34' hoppers.  I use a false bottom with the ground up charcoal on top for my 40 & 50' hoppers.  I also fill my coaling tower up with this material.  In my engine service facility yard I laid down strips of cut up black shingles under the track and covered the top with the charcoal & cinders from WS.  I grind up clay kitty litter with the sausage grinder to use as ballast on the other trackage.  On my team tracks where the track is embedded in asphalt & concrete I spike my track straight to the 3/B" thick Blandex top of my benchwork.  It saves money on ties or flextrack and the area is about three foot long with 2 tracks. The grinder has 4 different plates to make 4 different sizes of  rock plateor ballast.  I use the coarsest  plate to make riprap to put in areas requiring fill.  I use a mixture of fine and medium for mainline ballast.  I use acrylic paint diluted with blue windshield washer fluid to stain the ballast a dark gray or light gray depending on which railroad its used on.  UP & ATSF gets the light color while SP gets the darker color.  Tweet.

[Dave-the-Train]

Tweet

What do your sausages taste like?

[lvanhen]

I use WS fine ballast for the main line but it is too large for the yard. I searched around but could not anything small enough.

I finally found just the right size and color I needed. I went to the rock quarry and got a pail of "blue stone dust." I filter it once with mesh from a screen door and then through a flour sifter that my wife is still looking for. The rock left from the first filtering I use as "riprap" around the mountain base. The rock left from second filtering is about the size of coarse ballast and I use it on river bed edges.  

Doc

Sounds good to me, but what will you do if the Mrs. ever finds her sifter?Buy her a new one?