Thanks to everyone who commented on my ballast meanderings ! I do intend to do a final weathering with an airbrush , but I remain very dissatisfied with the colours ‘straight out of the jar . To date I’ve had some success colouring the ballast by shaking it with a dab of weathering powder . Caution with the work area this is a serious contaminant ! Trouble is , much of the colour is lost in the track wetting process . I’m testing Ballast bond currently , but it does not dry Matt as it says on the tin , glazing my painted sleepers . It spreads wonderfully on a wet bed , but tends to drag the ballast on a dry bed . Maybe I’m doing something wrong? . In the colouring experiments I’ve found that adding water to the powder / ballast mix does improve its resilience to being ‘washed off ‘ , but the business of drying it out is lengthy and it’s less ‘tweakable ‘ .
It’s a case of stirred NOT shaken when tweaking the colours because otherwise the pile gets bigger and bigger but doesn’t change much in shade , the added ballast colour being polluted by the powder already in main mix . Any comments very appreciated .