Best ways to change ballast colour

[Green_Elite_Cab]

Well there is a couple ways to do this. I know some companies that actually bust down the actual prototype ballast to be scale size, but these are eastern american railroad ballast. There may be such a company for your railroad available.

If you just want to kill the bright gray look, there are a bunch of ways to do it. Firstly, the starkness does go away, eventually dust and that dulls it. As far as adding the right colors, just think about what would fall from your locomotives and cars? Grease, oil, coal, grime, its all going to end up on the rails (and the ties/cross pieces).

So the first thing i would do is dilute some grimy black paint. Start off really thin, you don't want to over do it, because you'll have to rip the ballast out if you mess up. Just brush it all over, and clean the railheads. That should kill most of the bright grey appreance of the ballast, as well as weather the rest of tracks.

then examine what parts of the railroad we are looking at. the center between the rails usually are more heavily weathered, since thats where most of the oil tends to drip from, no matter what era it is. You might want to brus on some heavier (but still very diluted) coats of grimy paint. It should be faint over most of the mainline. If a locomotive is to be parked in an area for an extended period of time, then it is alright to add darker weathering.

Just use prototype pictures if you can to see what it looks like, and just try to tint it that way with diluted paints until you get what you need.