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Originally Posted by ekaz:

David,

A 50/50 mix works well. I put a squirt of dish detergent in the mixture to break up the surface tension. A baby bottle works well to apply the mixture as it is very controlled and accurate. That leaves very little mess to clean up and speeds the process along.

Ed Kazarian

I must have done miles of ballast, Ed and I never thought of a baby bottle.

 

Brilliant! 

 

The best part is that you can bin the teat if it clogs up.

 

Cheers

Loose ballast WILL find its way into the gearing sooner or later.  I had a single grain of small ballast stop my Atlas GP9 dead in its tracks.

 

I don't like ballast at all, but it's a necessary evil if you want your RR to look the part.

 

I've been trying to find rubber or cork ballast that's been ground up and set it in place using Matte Medium to help quiet things down.

 

My plans are to ballast outside the rails and leave between the rails unballasted.

And (I have tried on a single section of mainline, for testing) to assist with sound reduction, make use of the ballast to secure you track.  Forego the use of screws

to secure your track sections.  If placed properly, the ballast may be sufficient to

hold trackage in place.  A minimum use of screws on curves should be sufficient on most layouts, none on straight sections, just using ballast to hold.  Also, a bit more "prototypical" ?

 

Just a thought to try out and see whether it may suffice for your own purpose.

 

Jesse

Last edited by texastrain

I just finished ballasting about 10 feet of mainline today.  The hardest part...was getting off my butt and doing it!

 

I cleaned off the areas I was going to do, sprayed a 50-50 mix of water-isopropyl alcohol along both sides of the track, then used a 3oz measuring cup to pour the ballast down the sides (not putting it in between the rails), followed by a swipe of a brush to tidy it up.

 

I repeated the spraying of the alcohol/water mix to hold the ballast in place, then I coated the ballast with a 50-50 mix of Matte Medium-Water, poured from a squeeze bottle.

 

It'll probably take 2 days to dry and I ran out of ballast so I need to get to the LHS to get more.

 

It's not as bad as I remembered, just need to make sure everything I don't want to get glue on is out of the way cause it's going to get messy anyway.

For portable modules, 50/50 water and white glue is a must. A few drops of detergent are sufficient. Following a suggestion I read in O Guage Magazine years ago, I start applying the mixture between the rails until it bleeds to the outside. Then soak from the top of the ties until the mixture bleeds to the outside edge of the ballast. Having already gluing the adjoining landscape, the ballast glue bleeds into this as well, making a durable finish that lasts and survives the obvious abuse that modules must endure. 

In reality there's no absolute right or wrong way - whatever works for you is the right way! Being both frugal and preferring to work smart rather than hard, i have found 20% - 30% white glue with a drop of dish detergent is sufficient to hold the ballast in place. I just give it a soaking spray, smooth it out with a stiff bristle narrow paint brush (and sometimes my finger), and wipe the tops of the rails with a paper towel. Done!! It's stayed in place for over 20 years.

 

 

John C. posted:

Do NOT NOT NOT glue down your ballast!  When you want to change or attempt to repair or add wires it is a GIANT hassle!  I learned the hard way.  NEVER again.

There is another reason that ballast NEEDS to be glued down. If you don't, you can never clean your layout with a vacuum without losing all your ballast.

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