Ballasting goods yard and loco yards

[alangdance]

Can anybody suggest the best way to ballast goods yard and loco yards.

 

Alan

[Keith George]

In the past I have used a soggy mix of bird grit and used tea leaves mixed with a lot of watered down PVA glue.

 

Make it very wet and soggy and press it down firmly, leave to set.

 

Keith.

[Ben Alder]

You ideally want a very fine texture- I used cork, filled with Fine Surface Polyfilla against the rail sides and painted, adding a sprinkling of fine sand or similar to give a bit of relief. There was a nice pic of Hurlford - Ayrshire ways - posted in another topic tonight that shows the shed ground rather well.

 

https://www.flickr.c.../in/dateposted/

[eldavo]

Chinchilla bathing dust. It's fairly fine anyway but you can crush it down finer to get a smoother surface. Use it as you would ballast but make sure you use washing up liquid/screenwash/or something to reduce surface tension in your glue or it will clump up. Squash it down with your finger.

 

Cheers

Dave

[jonny777]

In the past I have used N gauge black 'scatter' material as ash ballast (example - http://www.howardscenicsupplies.co.uk/products/JAVIS-JS9-Black-Tarmac-Scatter.html) in loco yards, but I might experiment with a few of these suggested ideas.

 

 

Edited, to add this was for an 00 loco yard, in case anyone was confused.

[Mike Storey]

Your goods yard ballast will not look like your loco shed tracks. Whilst both need to be fine, as per any of the suggestions above, the loco yard will have been fully compressed into gunge via oil, water and coal/oil, probably with several puddles, whereas the goods yard will be compressed only where road vehicles cross and where locos stand for any time, and maybe where the shunter/loaders/unloaders or loco crews regularly walk. The rest will just be fine ballast or sand, coloured by whatever normally passes through,, whether coal, chalk, sand, bricks, manure etc etc. If modern, then remember diesel oil tracks as well, between the four foot.

[LNER4479]

For loco yard ground cover, I've used a sloppy, coloured (dark grey/brown) plaster mix with some fine ballast mixed in just to give a suggestion of texture. Generally level with tops of sleepers but with local undulations. You can then add local details (piles of ash, odd lumps of coal, puddles) etc on top of that. As Mike says above, years of depot staff and traincrew trudging about have compressed it to virtually flat.

 

You don't say what era, but the above is based on traditional steam era. Modern depots tend to have better defined, concrete walkways so can be somewhat cleaner but there can still be heavy ground contamination around fuel points (for example).

[olivegreen]

Chinchilla bathing dust. It's fairly fine anyway but you can crush it down finer to get a smoother surface. Use it as you would ballast but make sure you use washing up liquid/screenwash/or something to reduce surface tension in your glue or it will clump up. Squash it down with your finger.

 

Cheers

Dave

Wow!  These discussions get more esoteric by the day… the things one learns!  Thank you.

[Roger Sunderland]

The yard below was achieved using very fine sieved sand, laid on a bed of PVA. Whilst still wet a dilute mix of PVA and water, approx 50/50 and a few drops of washing up liquid was put on top using a dropper. This makes it all solid (very). Then add vegetation and colour using whatever takes your fancy with an airbrush

[Karhedron]

In the past I have used N gauge black 'scatter' material as ash ballast (example - http://www.howardscenicsupplies.co.uk/products/JAVIS-JS9-Black-Tarmac-Scatter.html) in loco yards, but I might experiment with a few of these suggested ideas.

I have used the same stuff (in N gauge) for my loco shed area but I am not entirely happy with the results. Whilst these areas were usually much darker than the running lines, I find the Woodland Scenics stuff too uniformly black with no variation in tone. Also I feel it is a bit too coarse. Here is a shot just after ballasting although I have since weathered the area to tone it in more with the ballast on the adjacen runnig lines.

 

 

I have heard that Das air-drying clay packed around the sleepers and then painted works well but I have not tried it myself.

 

http://nevardmedia.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/creating-effect-of-ash-ballast.html

[alangdance]

Roger love your photo and idea. Will certainly go with the fine sand with some cobbles. I have some Geoscencis fine sand, so will give this ago.

 

Now only the loco yard (steam) to get ideas for now.

 

I have dried the Das air-clay but can not get this to work to well. I have see in one of the mags someone using talc on top of fine sand/ballast.

Has anybody tried this before.

 

Please keep the suggests going. Any photos would be most grateful.

 

Alan

[BG John]

This is Chris Nevard's method

http://nevardmedia.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/creating-effect-of-ash-ballast.html