Bridge at South Wayside

[rrinker]

The tips provided by Dr. Wayne over in the scenery section really stopped the ballast 'erosion' problem - misting on straight from the bottle 70% isopropyl alcohol first keeps the dripped on alcohol/glue mix from running down the shoulder and carrying the ballast away with it, now it soaks in FIRST then runs down to the edges.
I still need larger brush for paiting - I do about 6 feet (both sides of both rails) before I start getting annoyed and quit before I make a mess. At that rate it will take me months to get all the rail painted. But yes, you have to do BOTH sides! You might not see it but the camera will. Plus if I skipped the wall side, I'D know it wasn't done and it would bug the heck out of me.

--Randy

[Gary S]

Randy, on my steep ballast, I think I was using too much glue all at once. I used plenty of alcohol to wet the ballast down, and the glue soaks in well. I think what I was doing wrong was putting on too much glue too fast. As I went back and forth with the glue, occasionally a spot of ballast would turn loose and slide down the slope, like a mud slide.

Tonight, I did some ballasting in front of the white bank building, on a steep slope, and I took my time with the glue. I waited a minute or so between applications, which allowed the glue to soak in and spread, so that subsequent glue applications didn't build up and make the slope slide down.

On painting the backs of the rails, well, there are a few places I will do that, but there are a bunch of places where

[rrinker]

I couldn;t find a decent dropper bottle - someone said they had them at Michael's but all I found there was the misting sprayer I use for the initial alcohol application. And the stors don't have ketchup and mustard squeeze bottles in winter around here, so I ended up buying a small bottle of mustard that came with a twist spount, like a glue bottle only much smaller. Poured the mustard out into the already open container at home, washed it out, and it is my glue/alcohol applicator - fairly small drops if you just barely open it. I think a ketchup dispenser, the kind that leaves just a very thin line no matter how hard you squeeze, would eb even better, but this works to keep the glue dripping on without creating a flood - just don;t twist the cap while gluing Anotehr trick I saw elsewhere, first pass I go down the inside of the rail and really flood it - a lot of that wicks out to the shoulder so when I make the third and fourth passes along the outside there's already a good bit of glue mixture saturating the shoulder so it doesn't wash out as easily.

--Randy

[radivil]

I think a ketchup dispenser, the kind that leaves just a very thin line no matter how hard you squeeze, would eb even better

These are pretty easy to find and very cheap ($2).

[Russ Bellinis]

I couldn;t find a decent dropper bottle - someone said they had them at Michael's but all I found there was the misting sprayer I use for the initial alcohol application. And the stors don't have ketchup and mustard squeeze bottles in winter around here, so I ended up buying a small bottle of mustard that came with a twist spount, like a glue bottle only much smaller. Poured the mustard out into the already open container at home, washed it out, and it is my glue/alcohol applicator - fairly small drops if you just barely open it. I think a ketchup dispenser, the kind that leaves just a very thin line no matter how hard you squeeze, would eb even better, but this works to keep the glue dripping on without creating a flood - just don;t twist the cap while gluing Anotehr trick I saw elsewhere, first pass I go down the inside of the rail and really flood it - a lot of that wicks out to the shoulder so when I make the third and fourth passes along the outside there's already a good bit of glue mixture saturating the shoulder so it doesn't wash out as easily.

--Randy

A well equipped drug store will have empty medicine bottles for sale with droppers built into the lid.

[rrinker]

Those might be good for fixing fine areas but for the main ballasting, having to keep loading thre dropper would get to be as annoying as having th ekeep reloading my too small brush for painting the rails.

--Randy