When is the right time to ballast?


D

dekker

Member
Do I ballast first and then bring the ground scenery up to it or do the ground scenery first and then ballast? I think that it would be better to ballast first but what do you think? Thanks
 
I'm not sure there's a hard fast rule..........Normally weeds and such grow up thru the ballast, which would dictate laying ballast, then scenic material., But on the other hand, most of the scenery was there before the railroad came through, so it should be scenery, then ballast. If the railroad has done trackwork recently, there would be no weeds. On branch lines and especially sidings, they might be quite overgrown. Personally, I lay the ballast first, that way I can add weeds and such if I want, or leave it clean.
 
Well, the biggest issue I've seen is water/glue run off, so Ballast first, to avoid "attaching" the scenery around it, in my eye, is the way to go.
 
Sorry to go against the grain, but my experience has made me change for ballasting after the ground cover has been put down. Now, I don't mean totally scenic the ground cover; only the ground itself. It is a lot easier to clean stray ballast off of the ground than to disturb the ballast shape trying to remove whatever ground goop you use (I like dirt-dirt:D ).
 
Well now that there are two versions I'll throw in a third just to mix things up!
I ballast first in hard to get to areas like around buildings, mountains, and tunnels then add scenery, and ballast last in areas where scenery is more detailed like up front scenes.
Oh heck, I do a little bit of everything to keep from getting bored, much like my work life...
 
I have always liked pouring and gluing the ballast about the last thing before firing up the trains. Weathering, too, of course.

If you are careful about pouring and grooming the grains, the previously laid ground foam will show up naturally at the edge. It wouldn't hurt to go back, once the ballast is done, and add some incursions by bits of vegation. Some broom, some heather, tall(er) grasses, sage, tumbleweed,...

It has been my method to this point, and I have no latent reminders filed away suggesting that I should rethink this approach.

-Crandell
 
I'm with Crandell on this one. I've found from hard experience that track problems always seem to show up AFTER you ballast. It's vital that you get the tracks and electrical connections perfect before you start ballasting. Once you get the track ballasted and find that one piece of track with the kink or the intermittent electrical connection, you end up ripping out about four track section on either side of the bad track and have to ballast all over again. If you're using flex track, the problems increase by orders of magnitude.
 
One more thing I should add is that I now stick my turnouts onto a strip of sticky side up duct tape (the shiny metal stuff, not the standard silver "Red Green" variety) leaving a gap in the tape directly under the throw bar. Then I press ballast in between the ties and brush the excess away. It makes for a clean job, keeps the glue away from moving parts and electrical contacts, and so far has stood up to heavy traffic quite well.
 
ballast

Thanks all for the input. My track is all down and wired and it has a base weather coat on it. I REALLY took my time laying the track and made sure that everything is as smooth as it could be and I fired it up for the first time tonight(5/9/08).I ran it about 3 hours using a new Athearn sd-40 snoot nose with several Walthers cars and not 1 problem. Sorry for going off the topic a bit I am just very pleased. I think that I will ballast first. I can see me spilling ballast onto my ground scenery and making a mess. Thanks again,Mark
 
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