Gary S' 2010 Summer Challenge - Bridge

[nachoman]

Gary, I think you are being too meticulous with your ballast concerns . No matter what I have used for ballast, or what technique I have used, there is always some cleanup work required to pick stray ballast off from the sides of the rails or tops of ties. Sometimes a rub over with a finger is enough to break it loose, other times you may need to use something like a bamboo skewer or chopstick to knock it loose. The coarser and heavier the ballast is, the less the problem is. But, once you get below a certain particle size no matter what material your ballast is made from, it doesn't take much fluid movement to entrain the ballast particles in the flow. The flow from your glue bottle or eyedropper is sufficient to entrain smaller ballast particles and carry them over the ties. If you are having to do significant cleanup afterwards, perhaps you technique could use refining. But some cleanup from the tops of ties is almost unavoidable.