Ballasting Turnouts

[PatB]

I'm contemplating building a small 1:35 scale narrow gauge layout, incorporating various bits and pieces I already own.

 

Track would be a mix of Peco and Hornby set track, with a couple of Streamline points and the odd bit of flexi. To disguise the 00ness of the track, I'd be using very deep ballast, covering everything but the railheads.

 

Obviously, whilst easy enough to do on plain track, it's going to be tricky on pointwork to get a good appearance and leave the vital bits of the points free to operate. I wondered if anyone who's done this successfully has any tips on how best to go about it.

 

If it makes a difference, ballast will be sand/grit dug from the garden (Western Australia has very little actual soil, but is made primarily of sand/grit) and passed through some laboratory sieves I happen to have handy to get a sensible size. Probably 0.3mm-0.8mm (representing roughly 1/2" to 1"), with a bit of dust mixed in, to try and represent a fairly coarse ash/cinder ballast.

 

Point operation will be wire in tube. IIRC the Streamline points are live frog. If so, they'll have external frog polarity switching rather than relying on Peco's internal mechanism.

[mike morley]

Some time ago there was a layout called, IIRC, Teetering-by-the-Well where the owner got around exactly that problem by removing the visible bits of every other sleeper.  He left the web beneath the rails untouched so the structural integrity of the points was retained.  When the layout's owner (Dave Balcombe?) died a few years back his family kept his website, on which he detailed what he did and how, going but it now seems to have disappeared into history.  Perhaps someone with a better memory than me can recall what he did in better detail?  I'm not sure if he improved the somewhat skinny appearance of the remaining 4mm scale sleepers by adding a wider, cosmetic 'sleeper' of thin plasticard or if that was something I thought of/suggested.