No, I just told her this morning, and she is estatic. She is happy now because she gets a whole brand new 14lb jug of kitty litter to play in..
I was afraid of that. Keep rocking the litter Tudor, not all of us have the disposable income to buy custom ballast. Never mind these jokers.:thumbs_up:
I have used kitty litter for a scenery base, but in my opinion, it is far to coarse to be used as ballast. I am a big proponent of using non-official-model-railroad products to save money, but they have to look right, too.
You are right. I am like you, it does have to look at least real. I am not too concerned with being proto correct, but it has to at least look like it might have been, or could be. I will dig up a couple pictures of a test piece I did a couple years ago using Tidy Cat. And no, it isn't right directly from the bag. You do have to sift it, and/or crush it to the right size like I mentioned. Too much for many to mess with, but if you have more time, than money, it is a good alternative.
To be honest, i really don't know.. Im not even sure how much ballast comes in a bag of off the rack hobby stuff.. I have never used it, because I always used kitty litter. But I have to admit, I did just order some woodlands ballast, because I do want to do part of my layout with it, to do a fair comparison. I am un-conventional, but at the same time, fair. I don't think it is fair to knock something I never used before. But I can tell ya, it is much more expensive. I paid $8 for 16 or so oz I think? That $8 would have bought about 20 pounds of Tidy Cat, hahhah.. As a side note. Here is a couple kitty litter coal loads I have done. One being a coal car in my current mine, and the other a coal load on my Atherns Mogul tender when I had to make room for the decoder.
I like this idea of the Kitty Litter and I am going to use it on my layout as soon as I start it I cant afford the 8.00 a bog stuff but the kitty litter would work just fine for me.
Arizona Rock & Mineral natural rock ballast costs about $4.95 for an 11 ounce bag of N Scale ballast For $10.00 you can buy enough ballast to ballast most HCD layouts.
