Looks good to me. I like that color and the size of the grains looks right.

SSWUPinSA Wrote:Its not Quartz... Its Dolorite, common in South Africa and used in most concrete and road surfacing... It does not look so great in those photos, colour is darker in real life... Here are a couple more to judge on... ]

Dolerite is a volcanic rock, and Dolemite is a carbonate rock.

Either way, I don't often see rounded rocks used as ballast in the USA. Mehanically crushed rock seems more common. From a modeling standpoint, color, texture, and size should be all that matter. Ballast is something I think looks better slightly larger than scale size. I also think it looks better if the color is not uniform. That often means mixing two sizes and colors of the Woodland Scenics commercial ballast, or going with a natural product. What you have done to your layout looks good.

Well I'm getting to the business end of the ballast. Decided I now have the right material and mixes for the mainline and the spurs. I will be ballasting a cleaner more even sized rock for the mainline and staging yard as these would typically be better maintained. I am then mixing in various degrees of soil and darker ballast for the spurs at the industries, most of which will have grass and weeds on them...!!

I finally have a couple of photo's that do show the maerial in abetter light...camera setting do help!

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And here are some images of the ballast before and after wetting/glueing:

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I think your track/structure composition is really strong. There is a very nice balance of viewing and operational accessibility. Also, I really like your trackage arrangement along the left edge of the layout - it looks to be a useful staging area that also participates in the switching operations, all in three switches. Elegant, great stuff! Your layout pix are really fun to look at. Thanks for posting all this. Ric

Work is going really pear shaped so have had little or no time to do any real work on the layout... I have a few pics of the areas I have managed to ballast and ground cover... Sill a looooooong way to go but I am happy with the colours and textures I have achieved...

Some Ballast preparation:

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Here are some shots of UPY 833 moving through the dry area of SSWUPinSA:

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That looks good I like the way you do the ballast and the area between the tracks.

Those turnouts are A#1....
And the locos aren't half-bad either..!!

Your ballast looks spot on. Great stuff.

Thought I would post at least something for you guys to look at... Work (real work) has not permitted much work on the layout... Replaced some of the mockups and took a few pics:

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Hope you enjoy!!!

That looks good! The gray ground cover in the foreground of the lower photo is very level/flat. How do you do that?
I have severe problems to get it really level. I get the fine ballast/sand etc. level on the ground. I spray it with a fine mist of water/alcohol. When I put the glue/water mix with a pipette each drop makes a little crater. If I move the pipette while the glue is dropping it creates little channels.
I do later on soak it with more water and sprinkle some more ground cover on to cover the craters and channels but it is far from perfection.

Reinhard....What I do is brush white glue on the "ground", then spread the gravel/dirt over it with a sifter. Once I got the "look" I want, I spray "wet" water over it to allow the gravel/dirt to soak up the glue underneath. After several hours, I'll go over the area with a spray of very diluted white glue. The ballast will go over the ground...just like in the "real" world. Works like a charm....

Gus, thanks for the guideline. i will use it the next days.
One last question: The white glue you put first on the ground, is it deluded or 100% glue to be soaked up?

Reinhard...It's 100%...Straight out of the bottle....