I've finally made it to ballasting my layout. I am wondering if anyone can direct me to someplace to buy bulk ballast. Woodland scenics tiny bags just aren't cutting it. I'll fill a landfill with plastic bags before all of my track is ballasted. Can someone tell me where I can begin my quest for some bulk quantities of ballast...
Someone once suggested buying bags of contractors sand from the big box home supply centers. Cannot recall the price exactly, but it was quoted as being under ten dollars for something like fifty pounds. As long as it's free of magnetites, and a color you can use, seems like a great deal. Boxcab E50
I make my own out of calcium sand (found at your local pet store), tile grout (Home Depot), and a spoon full or 2 of black paint. Under $20 to do a whole layout. Brian
I know it really isn't bulk but WS also has ballast in the shakers and also in large bags. They have 3 sizes of packages: 18 cubic inch bags 45 cubic inch bags 50cubic inch shakers Craig
Scenic Express has natural stone ballast. I have samples of the #50 light gray and dark gray that both look good to me. Mind you, I have not actually used it yet! - Jeff
I use granite dust. See if there is a local rock quarry in your area. I think it looks great. I sifted until I got the right size. Jeff
I'll echo what Craig said. If you are comfortable with and have already started using the Woodland ballast, buy a shaker, when that runs out, buy a large bag to refill it. How large of a layout are we talking. About 3/4 of a shaker was all that I needed for the last N scale layout I built, (4x8 double track main). I have been working on a large HO layout (16x16 double track) and I think on that whole thing we might have used 4-5 shakers. One shaker would handle roughly 15'-20' of double track main in HO. If you pofile your cork and don't pour the ballast on too thick, it goes a long way.
That looks really good, and the price is right up my alley. How about some details on the ratios and any tricks that may required. :tb-biggrin:
How big is your layout? Ballast always seems to go WAY farther than I expect it to...you must have a huge setup if you have a pile of bags. I say get the bigger bags or the bigger plastic containers....the cost of ballast isn't that much in the grand scheme of things. If you are using C80 track, you can use the cheaper craft sand (or whatever, really) as filler for a base layer so that you're not using ballast till fill the gaps between the ties and larger fill areas on the sides. You don't want to use so much that it's visible, but a thin layer can still save a lot of ballast if you do it right.
guys, great ideas.... thank goodness I asked.... so far, I think I'm gonna try the contractor sand and see if I can dye it.... I apologize.... the layout is 'L' shape... 12' x 4' with a 7'x 4' leg... there are two main lines and multiple spur lines and turnouts into the city and industrial area. As always, you fellas have saved my 'bacon' and layout.... thanks for the ideas....
Since some of you asked here’s how I went about making my own custom ballast. Here are the basic ingredients I used: First off I really didn’t want to put this much work into ballasting but after using Woodland Scenic’s ballast on my first real layout I just wasn’t happy with the grain size and color not to mention it floating terribly when attempting to glue it down. On my first attempt at custom ballast I used basic playground sand and grout. http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/data/500/P10100591.JPG Loved the overall color and the subtle variation in colors of the grains as well as the texture. Only problem is basic playground sand is full of magnetites. So much so that running a magnet through the sand wouldn’t be realistically feasible. I just didn’t want to take the chance of some of those coming loose and buggering up a locomotive. That’s what brought me to using calcium sand. I picked up the bag shown at the local pet store. It has nice grain size doesn’t float (much) when wetted and contains zero magnetic material. The color was WAY too light though. I tried a number of latex and acrylic paints in an effort to darken it up but all I was able to make from these experiments was a couple big old sandy blobs. That’s what led me to use an oil based paint. I used 5 plastic spoonfuls of flat black paint to one large Dixie cup of sand. This part takes a lot of mixing and stirring. It takes about 4 days for the paint to cure completely on the sand and during that time I had to sir it up a couple times a day or it would start to make a concrete blob again. Putting the material into a plastic container with a sealable lid made this a lot easier. All I had to do was shake the tar out of it a couple times a day. Heres what it looks like after the paint has cured. You can see some small boulders that I wasn’t able to break up during the paint curing process. I simply remove those before I mix the sand and the grout together. The idea of using grout (and sand for that matter) came to me via another modeler, Mr. Dan Crowley http://www3.telus.net/public/crowley/ballasting.htm In my opinion the tile grout gives the ballast another level of texture as well as an added color tone. I think when cured it also assists in adhesion. I used a 5/3 ratio of sand / grout. When mixed together it looks way too light. After the ballast is layed down and you add the alcohol/ water wetting the grout almost completely melts into the sand. I use normal dry ballast application techniques. The only thing I may do somewhat different is I make a funnel out of a sheet of paper for use as an applicator. After filling the paper cone it’s very easy to control the amount of ballast applied by just pinching or opening up the narrow end of the funnel as you run it along the track. Hope that inspires some of you to try mixing up a batch of custom ballast for yourselves. Brian
You will want to be very careful using contractors sand. It may be full of magnetites. See my comment in the post above. Brian
Great technique. The Dan Crowley website is very good, too. He models canadian national. I think he is the person I first saw re-motoring Bachmann F7 shells with Life Like GP20 mechanisms.
Hey, thats a pretty good idea he has there. His ground throw technique also looks pretty slick... if ever I get that far, maybe I will use it biggrin:
Like the one person states up above, it's shocking how far a small bag of ballast will go. My layout has 300' of track and I went through about $80 worth of ballast. It wasn't hardly worth making it myself. I used Highball... And it was great to work with...
I have always used HIGHBALL BALLAST and have been VERY happy with the outcome. This company is nothing fancy, but has great products. If you want a LARGE order, ask for a quantity price. NO website, they are a bit old fashioned, and have personal service. Address is: HIGHBALL BALLAST, PO BOX 523 UNION, KY 41091-0523 Sent an SASE for their catalog. Used the ballast for the first INDIANA RAILWAY, and will use the same products for the rebuilt INDIANA RAILWAY.
