As my Great Northern questions in the fallen flags forum has gone unanswered http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine...5-Ballast-and-Equipment-of-the-Great-Northern I'm just going to go with greys/buff colored Woodland Senics ballast as that will color match the Montana/Washington Pine forest Rockies the Grean Northern was in. I want to have a bit of color differences from the mainline and sidings and possibly the turntable area. I've been looking at model track photos but sometimes the mainline has a darker color ballast while the nearby sidings are lighter and vise versa. What would be more correct and what would you go with? Should the turntable area be different from the siding as well?
All are equally likely, but the fact is that most railroads prefer to acquire their own ballast and to do it as close-by as possible. Also, they take good care of the ballast on the mains and sidings, not so much in servicing areas. The ballast on the places where heavy tonnages move often and at speeds likely to make the ballast earn its keep, the ballast is clean and groomed properly. It is likely to be the colour of the rock where it is quarried, ideally close enough that it needs to be ferried in hoppers no more than a hundred miles or so. But it can be just as likely to be shipped much further if there is only the one ballast production site and it is of such good quality that they want it everywhere on their system. I have observed that the CPR and CNR lines through south central British Columbia have the same ballast on the sidings as on the mains. There are many places to get clean sand suitable for scale ballast. Hardware stores carry sandbox sand, there is the sand used in sand-blasting, there is sand at nearby lake beaches, or at seaside beaches (my own case), and you can get sand at landscaping sites and at places where they sell aquaria. The filters for aquaria have fine clean sand in them, and there is even sand for the bottoms of the aquaria.
A friend has started using polymeric sand on his N scale layout. I plan on doing the same thing. You can get it in a number of colors. We're using grey and for some variety mixing in some play sand. The beauty of polymeric sand is all you have to do is wet it and it binds to itself and no glue is needed. Dave
Polymeric sand is the sand that is used when laying pavers and brick pathways. With pavers, the sand can be simply brushed into the joints of the pavers, blown off the top of the stone and wetted down. The reaction creates a joint that hardens and holds the stones together, but will not crack or allow pests or weeds to grow up through the joints. You can probably find it at the big box stores. I really don't know how well it would work as ballast but might be okay.
