Recommended ballast

[Les Bird]

I'm in the process of relaying some track and am looking for recommendations for ballast. In the past I've used allegedly 00 scale ballast but it seems quite coarse to me. I've been looking at WWS extra fine ballast. Does anyone have any experience of using this!

[Ray Von]

I've had some success using play sand in N Gauge using copydex as a bond.

[Les Bird]

I think that may be a little too fine for my purposes but I'll bear it in mind

[Foden]

This is always going to be a very subjective matter, what one person is happy with won’t necessarily be suitable for another.

 

For me however, I was very happy with chinchilla dust on my last project in OO

[Kris]

For 00 I use Woodland scenics fine. In n I use sand.

[philsandy]

I used Woodland Scenics medium ballast for 4mm scale. In the coal/goods sidings I used fine, looks right to my eyes.

[RexAshton]

I've been happy with C&L Finescale for both 2 and 4mm

[Mick Bonwick]

I am working on some ballasting evaluation at the moment, coincidentally. I have chosen Woodland Scenics B78, Dark Brown, medium size, as suitable for my purposes. It is shown here under test with adhesives, applied to Peco code 75 track; the line in the foreground is still wet with diluted PVA and the line in the middle ground is dry with diluted Copydex.

 

I thought that this illustration might offer some help, although you haven't said which scale you will be working in.

 

 

I have not worked with WWS products, so can't really help with your initial question. I was a bit put off by their idea that ballast was only used for embankments. I prefer to buy from organisations that know a bit about their products and how they can be used by their customers. That's not to say that ballast can't be used on embankments, of course.

[Les Bird]

Sorry I should have said my layout is 00. Woodland Scenics seems to be popular so I'll give that a try. Thanks to everyone for the replies.

[bike2steam]

Take a trip to your nearest railway line and look at the ballast used. If you measure it you'll see the largest dimension on the larger stones is not much more than 3 inch/75mm. This equates to 1mm. Tesco make a cheap plastic, basic, tea-strainer at about 50p each, the mesh is about 1mm. Anything that doesn't go thro' is too big.

 

Edited January 27, 2021 by bike2steam
add pic

[dasatcopthorne]

I have used Woodland Scenics Dark Brown Med/Fine 50/50 mix. The Peco BH tack was sprayed first though with Underframe Dirt.

 

I glue my ballast down with Water based Matt varnish watered down 60/40 Varnish/water. This doesn't dry rock hard like PVA.

 

However, at board joint about 25mm is fixed with PVA so the the ballast doesn't chip when moving the layout.

 

Finally a dry brush of Underframe Dirt again in varying degrees as well as other weathering depending on the location.

 

Dave

 

 

 

[bike2steam]

1 hour ago, dasatcopthorne said:

 

I glue my ballast down with Water based Matt varnish watered down 60/40 Varnish/water. This doesn't dry rock hard like PVA.

 

 

 Good man, same as me - sort of, I use oak shades ( dark, medium, and light) of wood stain, it doesn't  have that 'porridge' look like pva or Copydex.

[Piemanlarger]

This is wws extra fine grey ballast.

 

I use it on my 0 gauge layout as it looks right to me.

[rob D2]

Best I ever found was Atwood aggregates but they seem to have disappeared without trace during covid.

 

Its getting the size right, but also the shape of each bit and on the shape I’ve never been convinced by WS, as it is ground shell IIRC rather than real stone and thus not quite the right shape .Regardless I use a mix in my sidings extension of gaugemaster , WS medium and fine .

 

If I was to do a modern line I’d have a look at chinchilla dust as some have used to good effect 

Edited January 28, 2021 by rob D2

[rob D2]

One with discarded sleepers s is Atwood 

second is WS medium, fine mix 

 

 

[Torper]

It depends to a certain extent as to the period you're modelling.  Ballast in time gone by was often not stone and when it was it tended to be smaller in size than the current granite stuff - recently I was on a footpath that crossed a railway line and I was surprised at just how large the ballast stones were.  Currently Network Rail likes to have rough stones about 50mm in size, which equates to about 0.67mm in 4mm scale.  A test with my micriometer suggests that Woodland Scenics Fine ballast is considerably less than that, Woodland Scenics medium and Carr's 4mm a bit more, though obviously each contain considerable variations.  Chinchilla dust is so fine that I can't measure it.

 

Coventry University did a very useful study on railway ballast - https://curve.coventry.ac.uk/open/file/1a7c8938-5b8d-24fa-52d5-f71a0d166760/1/Rail ballast.pdf

They suggest that while 50mm has often been seen as the optimum size for stone, up until the 60s BR was still often using stone betwen 10 and 20mm in size, and WS Fine would be ideal for that.   They go on to say: "in 1988 ballast was a broad collection of particles, with sizes ranging from 28 mm to 50 mm, and up to 20% of the particles of size between 14 mm and 28 mm. In the 1995 specification most of the ballast is stones of size between 37. 5 mm and 50 mm with a small percentage (up to 20%) of stones with sizes between 14 mm and 28 mm. In the draft European specification particles of size between 63 mm and 80 mm have also been introduced into the ballast, and the minimum size possible is between 32 mm and 22 mm".    However, although I model 1950s BR I like to see that my ballast is made up of stones, not something that in 4mm scale can seem little more than powder, and so I use a mix of WS medium and fine, as I note others here also do.  Nothing is perfect, but that appears to be the best compromise for me at least.

 

EDIT:  For some reason I cannot get the above link to open using Firefox.  It works fine in Chrome and Edge.

 

DT

Edited January 28, 2021 by Torper

[geoffers]

I think colour is an important aspect as well. For example, on the southern part of the Somerset and Dorset where I lived as a boy/teen the ballast was from Mendip quarries comprising of a blue/grey Carboniferous limestone (found some good fossil shells and corals in this too) and mid/dark brown andesite (a volcanic rock also quarried in the Mendips), So I made a mixture of mid-grey and mid-brown ballast (medium - not sure who made it now). It is not quite right colourwise but it looks OK. So I would advise checking the colour of the real ballast at the time and location you are modelling.

[bike2steam]

Two comments on the above;-

Torper, on some stretches of ballast there was also a 'sub-ballast' which was smaller stones about 12 - 25mm in dimension, but was mostly covered(not always) by the bigger stuff.

 

geoffers, weathering also had a big impact on colouring, SR ballast from Meldon  turned a dark brown after a few years of use.

[zarniwhoop]

10 hours ago, Torper said:

EDIT:  For some reason I cannot get the above link to open using Firefox.  It works fine in Chrome and Edge.

 

Opens fine for me in firefox-78.7.0esr

[Torper]

4 minutes ago, zarniwhoop said:

Opens fine for me in firefox-78.7.0esr

 

Still doesn't work for me using Firefox 85.0 64bit.  I regret to say that I have recently been using Edge more and more as I'm finding just too many problems with the current version of Firefox.

 

DT

[zarniwhoop]

48 minutes ago, Torper said:

 

Still doesn't work for me using Firefox 85.0 64bit.  I regret to say that I have recently been using Edge more and more as I'm finding just too many problems with the current version of Firefox.

 

DT

Odd. I'm on x86_64 linux and compiling firefox myself. On my development machine I build beta versions of firefox to check what changes (in terms of compiling it) and for the moment I've still got the 85.0 release available on that machine. Just tried it, the link works fine for me.

[dasatcopthorne]

12 hours ago, Torper said:

 

Still doesn't work for me using Firefox 85.0 64bit.  I regret to say that I have recently been using Edge more and more as I'm finding just too many problems with the current version of Firefox.

 

DT

 

It's only a PDF download.

 

Did you miss that?

 

[Rivercider]

Of course there will often be a big difference in the ballast on the main line compared to that in adjacent yards and sidings.

 

A couple of years ago I had a brake van ride on the Dartmoor Railway from Okehampton out to Meldon.  

This will be the Meldon dark grey hornfels ballast, 20/9/2018

 

cheers

[Torper]

20 minutes ago, dasatcopthorne said:

 

It's only a PDF download.  Did you miss that?

 

I've now resolved it,  It seems to be a not uncommon problem and in case anyone else has it the solution is to go to settings (3 bars) > options > applications.  Under the applications panel find Portable Document Format (PDF) in the list and click on it to select it.   There's an Arrow column with various options; for some strange reason mine was set to "download".  Instead I chose "preview in firefox" and all now works fine.  Why it had decided to change to "download" I do not know as it has always previously opened in Firefox..

 

DT

[geoffers]

For bit of fun thought I post this not very good photo (taken with a very simple camera on Sunday 6th March, 1966) on a dull and gloomy day to illustrate the differing colours of the ballast on the S&D in a position about 400 yards north of Bailey Gate Station on the 1:100 gradient towards Green Lane Cutting.