More Track Painting and Ballast Trials

I've been hard at work on these two sections of track for practice painting and ballasting for a couple of weeks now. It's a slow process because I find myself with very little time for modeling now that summer has arrived. When I do get time though, its full speed ahead with as many projects as I can handle. This one has been the primary lately and its actually been a lot of fun to work on. 

So far I have completed the straight section of track and have made good progress on the switch. At first I said I wouldn't post a picture of the ballast job on the first one, but now that I've been looking at it, I kind of like the color combination. To each their own, right? Here's what a 50/50 mix of Woodland Scenics medium dark brown and medium buff looks like. 

A look at my 50/50 mix of medium dark brown and medium buff ballast.

Here's another look with one of my boxcars just because.

While that one is not the best looking in the world, it definitely taught me a few things about track painting and ballasting that will help when it comes to building my office shelf layout. I think the most important thing I learned was just to take my time, especially when doing the painting. If you want something to look good, it requires patience and that's become pretty obvious through this process.

Now onto the switch. I took the same approach to painting this one and it took me a good couple of hours to complete the painting. I know that seems like a lot, but I want these to look just right, so I see it as time well spent.

A look at the painted switch track before starting the ballast work.

A look at the switch track after starting the ballast work.

I still have one more piece of track to create for this one so the upper left area runs out to the end of the board. I did this by custom cutting a couple of pieces of rail and manually placing some plastic ties I cut from remaining scrap track. It's a bit of tedious extra work, but make for much better looking track if you ask me. The only tricky part is figuring out what to do since I cannot place standard rail joiners in there anymore. 

I'll work on that problem when it comes to having a running train. The office shelf layout will be static, so I don't need to worry about the connectivity between rails just yet.