Things have been a bit quiet at Buckden over the past month, both on the blog and in the railway room. This has been mainly been to work and travel, and as I'm heading off on Eurostar today that isn't going to improve soon! I've also been distracted by another little railway project not directly related to Buckden, but which I might share here sometime.

Anyway! One thing that has happened at Buckden and not been blogged is ballasting. Buckden, like many Midland branch lines, was a lightly laid affair, which is why I laid track directly onto the baseboard. Studying photos of the station the ballasting was a fairly light affair too! I decided to go with Guagemaster granite chippings, which i may tone down a little in the future but look about right for now. Before ballasting I painted the rail sides and sleepers by hand with Phoenix Precision P991 Track dirt (labourious but very relaxing!) and then brushed a little Phoenix Precision P977 Track Colour (Rusty Rails) onto the rail sides whilst the track dirt was still a little wet. The result I like as a base, and will weather in a little more later - probably with a wash of grey onto the ballast. I do really like Phoenix Precision paints - they are the nicest to use with great cover, and buying direct from the website I've always had excellent service and very fresh seeming paint!

For ballasting I brushed the ballast into place with a small brust, then used a smalll syringe filled with a mix of 4:1 Water/PVA and 2 drops of cheap washing up liquid per pint of mix to break the surface tension. I actually found that I needed to add more washing up liquid each session, as it seems to loose it's influence over a day!

Anyway, photos below, as you can see the process was aided by four Bachman EWS weathered MWAs (38-013A), which were an anniversary present from K, hauled by a Lima EWS liveried Class 37 I picked up cheap at the extra Calne show a few weeks ago.