Drystone Moss: A 006 pizza - track ballasting

Ballasting is one of those jobs that I wasn't looking forward to, mainly because it has a reputation of being tedious and easy to get wrong. In the end I quite enjoyed it, but then I haven't really got much track to work on. I started by experimenting with loose ballast on a bit of scrap wood before letting loose on the pizza.

The usual method, laying the ballast then wetting with water with a drop of washing up liquid using a sprayer didn't work for me, the sprayer wouldn't mist as much as needed and the ballast clumped together as soon as the water hit it. I then tried using an eye dropper instead of a mister, that had the same result. Maybe our washing up liquid isn't suited to the task. So, after watching a couple of youtube videos, I tried a 50/50 mix of water and meths. That did the trick so that's the method I used. For glue I first tried watered down PVA, and again I wasn't happy with the results so instead I used WWS (War World Scenics) static grass layering glue applied with another eye dropper. This worked well.

The tools used;

Note that one eye dropper has its own bottle, handy as I filled it with the water/meths mix. The brushes were used to move the ballast around. The large spoon is sold for melting sealing wax in, the middle sized one is a Nuffield spoon and the smallest is a Tamiya paint stirrer. All three proved their worth adding ballast where needed in the quantity required. The back of the Tamiya stirrer also found use gently tapping ballast in place.

I found that by doing short sections at a time, 4-5", and allowing the glue to dry for a few hours I could do about 3 sessions a day. By not doing too much in one go I wouldn't get bored and could keep up what I hope is a reasonable standard of work.

Woodland Scenics fine grey was chosen, I wasn't sure what to use so I went for a middle-of-the-road choice. I deliberately kept the shoulder uneven, I want the track to look unkempt without affecting the running of small mechanisms so grass between the rails is out (for now).

Rocks next, but first, a brew

Paul.