To answer your question at the top of this thread, No. And my reason is that I am not looking for a constant maintenance project. I would be up on the table maintaining loose ballast all the time, if I had it.
You can try it if you want, but I don't recommend it unless you have a very small layout. Also, I would not recommend kitty litter under any circumstance. Scale rock from Brennan's looks the best and is scale size. A lot of other products will give you ballast rocks the size of scale baseballs.
