Monday, March 10, 2014

Trying Out Some Ballast

One of things I wish I did was add ballast to my nursery wall layout project. I just left the track nailed down on top of the cork roadbed in the interest of saving time. It's not that it looks bad or anything, it's just not as realistic as I would've liked. That being said, I am going to make sure it is one of the things I include in my office shelf layout. Before jumping right into it for that project, I decided to make myself a quick section of track and roadbed mounted to piece of wood for some ballast practice. Plus it would work as a neat little display track for a locomotive and one piece of rolling stock, at least that's the plan for now. Here are some pictures of the ballasting process. 

Putting down the ballast proved to be pretty time consuming.
Here is a closer look at the ballast before gluing.
A look at the ballast soaked with my 50/50 mix of water and Elmer's glue.
The end result after the glue dried, not bad if you ask me.
A couple of things I've learned from this:

1) Coarse ballast is not the best choice for HO scale, it just looks a little too big if you ask me
2) I should've mixed in another color ballast, something darker, to make for a more prototypical look

There's really not much I can do about the fist thing, but I think I've found a solution for the second. Why not try to weather the ballast a bit and give it a more realistic look? I've been looking around online for techniques to do so and I think I will try using a dark wash to add some color. I'll try to do that here soon and get some more pics posted. 

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