I've made a start on the weathering of the track and ballasting on Callow Lane.

I would normally do all the track weathering first, which usually involves painting and/or dry brushing each individual sleeper, plus painting the rail sides and chairs varying shades of light/mid rust-brown/brake dust etc. This would then be followed by ballasting/siding grunge/weed growth etc.

My ballasting methods on previous layouts such as 'Engine Wood' and 'Bleakhouse Road' have generally involved painting PVA between each individual sleeper bay (3 or 4 at a time before the glue starts to go off), and sprinking ballast on top of the glue. The shallow depth of C&L or SMP sleepers makes this possible and I have been very happy with the results.

Callow Lane, however, uses track with 'full depth' sleepers from the P4 Track Co/Exactoscale, and when I tried 'The Captain's normal method', this was the result I got:

I'm using a mixture of beach sand and 2mm ballast from the likes of Woodland Scenics and Carrs, and I wasn't particulary happy with either of the above two experimental sections. The ballast was too low, and I didn't like the way it clung to the slides of the sleepers on one of the sections. It might be possible to repeat the process to get the required ballast depth, but I simply couldn't face that....

So, this time, I have reverted to an alternative method, which is used by many others and which I have used myself in the past, involving the laying the dry ballast first, very gently wetting it with a misting spray and then dropping dilute PVA (with a drop of washing up liquid in it) onto the damp ballast.

Here is a 9 inch stretch where the ballast has been wettened and dilute PVA applied. The cut up bits of bin bag are obviously there to protect the rest of the layout, including any of the steel rail within range of the spray:

The bit of vertical white plasticard is a temporary representation of the brick face of the old disused platform, which will be installed once the ballasting etc. has been completed. I would add that it took over half an hour just to get the ballast reasonably neat on that 9 inch section, plus a fair bit of time faffing around wetting it, applying the glue and clearing up!

Here is a shorter section which I did a couple of days ago, at least the glue has now dried solid (initially I used too dilute a mixture, and had to give it two goes, the glue I used tonight has a bit more PVA in it!):

08/7/10

Well, I've tried vibrations (to settle the ballast more evenly), and I've tried Klear on the ballast. The latter was more successful, but despite it's lack of viscosity, it is still apt to form 'bubbles' in the ballast, displacing carefully laid and tamped material... :headbang:

Anyway, I did a section on the main running line tonight and when it's dry, I'll see how durable it is and how neat the ballast has come out.

09/7/10

The bit I did with Klear yesterday didn't come out too badly, but one or two small sections came away when I vacuumed up residue this evening. Some small spots of PVA have secured new ballast to fill the gaps.

I've now done another section with Klear, however, this time using a small wooden tamper tool (idea from Re6/6) to tamp the ballast down neatly when still dry, and then have applied the Klear, which seems to disturb the ballast less, when it's been tamped with the wooden tamper tool. I've also deposited much of the Klear on the sleeper tops, from whence it has flowed around the ballast. We'll see how the sleepers have dried in the morning....

However, another advance is the use of grease-proof paper (idea from Will Vale on this forum), to tamp down any wet blobs of ballast, once the Klear has been applied. What's also been quite effective is using the wooden tamper tool on top of the grease-proof paper...