Ballasting pointwork

[Dawnflyer]

I have got to the stage of starting ballasting my layout and looked at several demonstrations of how to apply pva very carefully around moving parts of pointwork.

I decided to try a safer approach as I wasn’t confident that some of the glue would not affect the movement.

I started by spreading a thin layer of my mixed ballast on a sheet of A4 paper to almost cover it all and then photographed it.

After adjusting the size and colour by a light dirty wash the print out was close to the original ballast.

I cut a strip 35 mm wide and 130mm long and inserted it underneath the moving parts of a point on a trial piece of trackwork.

I ballasted the rest of the track in the normal way including between the ends of the sleepers next to the moving parts of the point but none between the rails, thus avoiding any glue getting onto moving parts.

The results are acceptable to me and must be somewhat quicker than applying glue around and between moving point blades.

If a slot is cut from one side to the centre of the ballast paper strip the point operating steel pin and the baseboard slot could be closely covered with a ‘photo ballast strip’.

The ‘photo ballast’ is of course lower being under the sleepers but if a gradual transition of adjacent ballast is formed it’s not too apparent to my eyes and for me has taken some of the stretching with a small paint brush away.

Comparing the photo strip with all my pointwork templates I am hoping the standard strip size will be OK for all configurations.

The photos attached show the idea and perhaps others may want to use this method permanently or until the more time can be spent with a steady hand.

[ISW]

8 hours ago, Dawnflyer said:

I have got to the stage of starting ballasting my layout and looked at several demonstrations of how to apply pva very carefully around moving parts of pointwork.

I decided to try a safer approach as I wasn’t confident that some of the glue would not affect the movement.

I understand your trepidation, as it kept me from ballasting for almost a year. However, I recently 'bit the bullet' and, in the space of a few weeks, ballasted my entire Upper (scenic) level of the layout, including over 20 turnouts and 8 double or single slips. I too was very concerned about 'gumming up' the turnouts and so was very careful to begin with.

 

Here's the tools I used:

 

and here's a typical junction ballasted:

 

What I did was to just follow the 'tried and tested' method:

• at turnouts I used bluetac (well, actually some of it was white) to cover the switch toe, and between the stock & tongue rails. Plus some over the ends of the stretcher bar to make sure there was 'space' at each end for it to move (keeping the ballast clear)
• spreading the ballast, manually (no spreader box) using spoons
• levelled the ballast using various brushes (not nylon ones, the static causes havoc)
• tapped all the rails with the spoon to get 'most' of the ballast off the sleeper tops
• sprayed / misted the ballast with water
• used a syringe to spread the PVA / water mix (50/50, with a few drops of washing up liquid) over the whole ballast

At turnouts, the syringe made it sufficiently controllable to keep the PVA mix off the switches. It was possible to place PVA in individual sleeper beds near the switch toe. However, even where I did get PVA on the switches (sometimes rather a lot!) I was easily able to 'break the PVA bond' after a couple of hours to free up any sticking switches. This was done at the same time as removing the bluetac with tweezers (before the PVA mix has fully hardened).

 

I must add here that I do not rely on electrical contact between the stock rail and the tongue rails. I have 'jumpers' soldered between the rails, so any PVA on the switches does not cause me any electrical issues.

 

After a day or so, I went round the glued ballast with a hand-held vacuum cleaner. This was supposed to just pick up any loose ballast, but it also highlighted any areas where I hadn't put enough PVA glue mix! This was easily fixed, but I was surprised how often this happened. 

 

So, by all means use your 'printed ballast' method, but as a total novice (this was my first experience of ballasting) , I found no issues at turnouts with the more common method described above.

 

I hope this helps to give you some confidence.

 

Ian

[Dawnflyer]

Thanks Ian for taking the time to explain in detail your method of ballasting. I especially like the use of the bluetac as a masking media.

I photo ballasted some 14-points, slips and 3- way turnouts last night in little over an hour ready for the proper ballasting.

I think I will continue with this but trial your method on the test piece if I can remove the existing ballast with usual method of warm water and certainly do the turnouts nearer to operating / viewing area.

 

In that I have some buildings and platforms in position I needed to remove some in order to access some positions and thought I would pass on my method of mounting station canopies so that they can be removed easily and not as prone to damage if knocked by accident.

Holes are drilled in the platform to allow a small plastic tube to be glued in flush with the top.

A wire pin is glued into thr base of each canopy support stanchion which is a slide fit in the tubes.

This fixes the stanchions upright but not so rigid to sustain damage if knocked, it just bends the wire if a soft type is used. Ie florists soft iron wire.

Going to use the same method for station name boards and lamps etc.

 

[doilum]

Spray some WD40 into a cap and apply to the rails and slide bar with a brush. Good luck with the three way! Even in 7mm I would need a stiff drink and planning meeting for that one.

[Michael Hodgson]

I too go for spreading ballast dry then setting it using diluted PVA mix as the adhesive.  I use a spreader box, but only on plain track, they're not much use over pointwork  Spraying the dry ballast with water is sound, because that doesn't from a sticky residue on the rails..  Much easier to move ballast from places it doesn't belong before adding glue, so care at that stage saves a lot of work later.  So after spraying, check that the blast action of spraying hasn't moved the ballast to somewhere you don't want it before adding the adhesive mix -  but (experience here!!) don't spray the adhesive because it's a tedious pain to clean the dried glue off the rails.  It is important to include the washing up liquid in the mix, because that reduces the tendency for the adhesive to it form into globules moving your carefully position ballast.

 

Statement of the obvious, but do be careful not to get ballast into the gaps at frogs, between check rails and running rails and between point blades and stock rails.  It can become wedged there and stick, then becomes a really tedious job to remove later.

 

If you are using point motors mounted under the baseboard you will have a slot for the operating pin to come through - make sure that is kept clear too.  You don't want ballast jamming that mechanism, also make sure that you don't have a raised ballast shoulder impeding movement of the tie bars from one position to the other

 

3-way and slips obviously need more careful prepartion than simple points - practice on simple ones first.

[Dawnflyer]

Thanks for all your tips and good advice.

[ISW]

7 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Statement of the obvious, but do be careful not to get ballast into the gaps at frogs, between check rails and running rails and between point blades and stock rails.

Indeed yes. I found that teaspooning the ballast into the relevant sleeper beds (both inside and outside the rails) and then 'tamping' with the ends of a small brush works quite well.

 

7 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

If you are using point motors mounted under the baseboard you will have a slot for the operating pin to come through - make sure that is kept clear too.

I didn't have any problems with my 8mm holes for servo operation at turnouts, probably because I didn't ballast those sleeper beds at all. However, I found ballast was 'dripping' through the holes drilled in the baseboard for feeder cables soldered to the rails. Those holes were really small, such that it was difficult to thread the wires. Even so, the ballast came though. Eventually I twigged that this can be easily prevented by dripping some neat PVA over the wires at the baseboard holes between the sleepers and letting it set before placing ballast.

 

7 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

also make sure that you don't have a raised ballast shoulder impeding movement of the tie bars from one position to the other

That's where I just put a blob of bluetac, to create the required space.

 

Ian

 

[meatloaf]

I like to use Ballast Magic powder glue for pointwork.

 

Mix it with the ballast, spread it how you want it then just spray with water to fix it down. No runny glue round the pointwork then

[Captain Kernow]

Whatever method you use, just take it slow and steady and really carefully!

 

Rushing a job like that is the enemy of a good result.

 

Edited June 14, 2022 by Captain Kernow

[Michael Hodgson]

1 hour ago, meatloaf said:

 

Mix it with the ballast, spread it how you want it then just spray with water to fix it down. No runny glue round the pointwork then

The spray needs to be gentle - you don't want any pressure or it will sandblast everything in sight with ballast!

[Dawnflyer]

Thanks to everyone for the helpful advice, I will have a look at the Ballast Magic.