Ballast colouring

[Derek H]

Would the colour of ballast used be specific to regions.

I am currently ballasting track, and would like to add a little colour variation in ballast used.

I have seen a couple of pics where there is slight variation but am unsure if this the norm.

 

A little help and advise would be most helpful

 

Derek

[eastwestdivide]

Do you mean like the pink-ish stuff you get (or used to get) in Scotland? Presumably depends on the quarry and type of stone used.

Supplementary question, now that they have these virtual quarries, does that mean fewer sources of ballast and less variation? Or does ballast now travel a longer distance, so that a distinctive colour would be seen over a wider area?

[Derek H]

Will try and make my question a little clearer, generally from what I can see most ballast would appear to be a dark brown colour, would it be feasable to see,say, a grey ballast in sections and maybe a buff colour, this would add the colour variations I am looking for.

[asmay2002]

Will try and make my question a little clearer, generally from what I can see most ballast would appear to be a dark brown colour, would it be feasable to see,say, a grey ballast in sections and maybe a buff colour, this would add the colour variations I am looking for.

 

It will vary greatly with both age of the ballast, era and location.

 

In steam days many sidings and yards had ash ballast and some pre-group companies even used it on main lines. Many pre-group companies took it from quarries on their own patch so the ballast that each company used was at least slightly different and in some cases very different ranging from grey to black to brown depending on the local stone. One or two used beach shingle.

 

Areas where locos stopped regularly would have ash deposits, areas with heavy braking involved take on a rusty brown tinge from brake block dust.

 

The modern era is much duller but there is a noticeable change from grey to brown as the stuff ages.

[96701]

Whilst travelling around, I've noticed that whilst the majority of the ballast might be one underlying colour, odd patches of a different colour occur where bagged ballast is manually added to supplement the existing.

[zarniwhoop]

As always, if you're modelling a prototype, colour photos are useful, but in my experience they're very rarely consistent - I've spent some time recently looking at colour photos from Sussex, mostly 1960s, and for every photo that shows brown ballast at a particular place, there is another showing grey! Part of the problem, of course, is poor colour reproduction, and another part is over or underexposure.

 

So, to an extent, I suggest you look for good pictures of your prototype, or of lines in the same area, and get a feel for the overall impression. To me, as well as the actual colour, part of the "looks real" question is the amount of variation in the ballast. Some places seem to have a consistent shade, perhaps with added dirt/oil, in others ballast seems to have a speckled appearance.

 

??en

[ChrisO]

Take a look at Manchester Model Railway Society's Website (mmrs.co.uk) & their technical articles section. There's a nice little article about ballasting in there.

[Derek H]

many thanks for replies, variations in colour appear to be quite widespread.

[jamie92208]

The colour will vary for all sorts of reasons. Certainly ballast used to be sourced much more locally than nowadays with limestone and granite used as well as ash. The colour tended to be brown which was a combination of rust from brake blocks and rails together with toilet deposits from passenger trains. Yhis tended to produce a fairly uniform brown which was more intense near the rails. In diesel days there would be a lot of oil deposits in station areas. The answer is anything could be correct depending on when maintenance was done in the area concerned.

 

Jamie

[lost track]

This is an interesting thread, it made me wonder what was used on the Isle of Wight as I had read mention of material taken from beaches, so I had a little search and came up with the following:

 

In 1864 the Isle of Wight Railway used chalk as ballast, and in 1875 the Ryde and Newport Railway

used both chalk and stone. Though it is recorded that in 1879 the Newport, Godshill, and St Lawrence

Railway used broken stone, it is thought more likely that chalk was used. Gravel was used for ballast in

1872 by the Isle of Wight [Newport Junction] Railway and in 1882 the Brading Harbour Improvement

Company used shingle, whereas washed gravel and coarse sand was the choice in 1889 of the

Freshwater, Yarmouth, and Newport Railway. Though some of the Island??™s railways did have quarry

sidings much of the gravel ballast was imported and it is known that there were ballast trains running at

Brading Harbour47.

 

From www.Aggregate.com

 

Thinking about it, I grew up in white pit lane in Newport...as the name suggests there is an old chalk quarry, I wonder if thats what the chalk was used for?