New roadbed ?

[Trucklover]

Josh, they have tried to offer various thicknesses of road bed product to simulate various types of prototypical track. I used to work in the area around the U.P.'s Washington Blvd. yard and Santa Fe's Hobart yard. If you look at Hobart yard, the mainline has Santa Fe's typical pink ballast, the yard is gray ballast and the ballast for the yard is probably 6 inches lower than the mainline. I did some work for a small grocery warehouse across the street from Hobart that had an out of service siding out back. That siding was laid right on dirt with no ballast what ever. If you are trying to model a prototype location like Kurt is doing with NW 58th Street in Miami, you just have to study pics of the prototype to know what was there. In the course of the thread on Kurt's model of Miami, Shortliner Jack linked to google maps of the area. If you look at the pictures accompanying the maps, you will notice that the prototype has just a thin layer of ballast down on top of the typical Florida sandy soil. The pictures show that Kurt modeled it exactly as it looks! In short, you need to start with the prototype if you are modeling a prototype location like the ME&T you want to do. Manufacturers make generic scenery materials, but the modeler has to figure out how to use those materials to accurately model a prototype scene. The manufacturer has identified the thickness of the ballast to be suitable for typical mainline ballast, yard ballast, or siding and spur ballast, but typical does not mean that it will match the prototype you want to model.

Thanks for the tips Russ Looks like its back to Google Maps Street View and Windows Live Search hehe