More Track Painting and Ballast Trials

Now that I look back at the test track I painted and ballasted recently, I am not completely satisfied with the way it looks. I kind of took the easy path and just painted the ties and rails all the same color. It looks of from a distance, but when you get up close to it something is just a bit off. The other problem was going with the coarse ballast, it is just way too big to look anywhere near prototypical. All that being said, I've decided to go back and do a few more trial pieces with some new paint and smaller ballast.

I've actually started two more sample sections of track: one with cork roadbed and medium ballast, and one with no roadbed and medium ballast. I did this because I wanted to see the difference between the two so I know how to plan for building my office shelf layout. I plan on having an industrial siding of some kind, so I may need to go without roadbed if it looks good enough. Plus, practice makes perfect and these will help me improve my track skills.

Two new test tracks for painting and ballasting.

Along with trying out the smaller ballast, I went out and bought myself a bottle of rust colored paint from Testors for the rails. Last time around everything was all one color. This time I'm hoping the rust color will make the rails look more realistic. Below is a look at what I've done so far. I just need to remember to clean the tops of the rails now.

Trying out some rust colored paint on the rails.

One last thing I decided to do at the last minute was painting the cork roadbed with the same dark brown paint I've been using for the ties. I noticed  on the last test track piece that if the ballast is light in certain areas you can see some of the exposed cork. That is definitely not a prototypical looking material, so I figured painting it brown would make it more like earth underneath the ballast. This was just a quick experiment to see how it would look so I may have to find a better, more earthy looking paint to do more of this in the future.

Hopefully painting the roadbed will give it a more prototypical look when this one is complete.

I have some painting to finish up on both pieces of track then its time for ballasting. I'll try to get some updated pictures of the completed pieces once they are all set. I'm hoping this will help me make a decision on which method to go with for my office shelf layout. Not sure which will be better looking, so I'll have to wait and see.