Evening all,

Following on from my last entry, I wanted to undertake some tests on the inset track and ballasting for the layout. The only ballasted section will essentially be the track along the front whilst most of the area depicted had a concrete type apron. As mentioned before I have had a few disasters on my 2mmFS layouts with both of these so thought a few tests would be a good start rather than wade in.

I assembled a 60ft length of C+L plain track on a 5mm foam board base and this was first sprayed with track colour weathered sleeps as a base.

I then built up two different options for the concrete hard stand using 5mm foamboard and a card top layer. The first option runs the card tight to the rail, whilst the second option stops it short to create the gap as described by Scott in a reply on my last blog entry. 

I then filled this gap with a proprietary ready mix filler which was sanded when dry so slightly lower then the rail - this is twofold, firstly to create the infill gap and secondly to have something slightly lower for when cleaning the rails.

I then applied two coats of some acrylic paint although I am not so keen on the brush strokes. 

Ballasting was then applied using two types of ballast obtained from Green Scenes at a show. Looking at the prototype pictures I wanted to create the very dark (almost black) ballast seen at the dries rather than my usual light grey ballast. PVA and water with some detergent was applied using an old syringe and left to dry over night. Incidentally, my son and I prefer the slightly larger ballast than the smaller and I purposely did not buy ‘7mm ballast’ as people tend to say it’s overscale.

This morning, I first picked out the chairs in acrylic rust colour and then toned them down later with weathering powders. The same mix of black and brown powers was applied to the ‘concrete’ running the black powder into the small groove next to the outer rails. Joints in the concrete were scored with a scalpel then gone over with a 0.7mm lead pencil, adding a few cracks too. Finally I applied some static grass to the track and also in the cracks as well as the groove alongside the rails as I am modelling the scene circa 1983 just before it closed, so would like a little evidence of neglect.

Overall I am very happy with the results. To get rid of the brush lines to the concrete I might spray the top layer of card before applying it in place. I might do this in sections too creating some thin joints rather than scoring them.

This now allows me to start to prepare the base for the inset track on the layout and then get the ballasting on the go. Once these two large elements are done it will allow me to turn my attention to the dries buildings...and I have started to have some thoughts on those too.

As always, comments welcome,

Pete