Track Painting and Ballast Update

I was finally able to lay down the rest of the track for my second trial piece for ballasting and painting. All I had to do was make about a 1 inch long piece that would extend from the end of the switch. I did this by cutting off part of a curved piece of track. Here's what it looked like before that small piece was added. 

A look at my second trial piece of track before adding the last small piece.

After adding that small piece, I glued it down in place with some gorilla glue, which definitely gives you a good hold for something like this. The next step was to finish ballasting the track. I used a medium grey blend ballast from Woodland Scenics this time around and I have to say it looks much better than the mixture I tried last time. Here is what it looked like after I was finished applying the ballast and gluing it in place.

A look at the track with all the ballast in place.

Now that I've tried out the grey blend ballast and have seen it used and recommended by a lot people on the internet, I think this will be what I end up using for my office shelf layout project. The next thing is finalizing what I want to do for painting the rails and ties. I think the rust color on the rails looks good, but may be a bit on the bright side, so I either need to play with darkening it up or going with a new paint altogether. If any one has suggestions or could share what they use I would really appreciate it.