Ballasting Your Track

[Shashinka]

After laying track, do you ballast? (Go to hell option is for those of us who do, and wish we didn't!)

[keiman]

Does that answer your question?

[Shashinka]

Do note, I share the same sentiment.

[bill937ca]

I use Tomix track and because of the texture I'm painting a the roadbed on my train layout rather than ballasting.  There isn't much room behind the rails for ballast with roadbed track for one thing.

[scott]

I ballasted the track at our main station, but I may never do it again.

[inobu]

UNitrack is the last thing you want to ballast. The track is too high.

This is what we envision in our minds which Fine track and Flessman can support.


Those of us that use unitrack this is what we don't realize.




Kato's unitrack is more in line with this configuration


Where the ballast is above the basic terrain. When we try to fill the gap it looks funny.

Just imagine if the ballast was filled to the edge if the road.

The ballast should not go out but a few mm from the base. Unitrack is hard to do correctly. They should do away with the glossy ties too.

[keitaro]

few mm form the base ?? lol mines like 1.6cm from the base. I did this cause of wanting to put signs and atc equipment along the track   you may think it's odd to do so much out but when the fence is up and the equipment is sitting next to fence it doesn't look so bad.

I got 2 packs of the atc parts but have yet to put them down but when i do i will post a pic. plus i'll have shrubs/weeds and such along the fence making it not look as wide as it does. You will have a heart attack when i post my sidings pic lol.!!!

Will post here later. Had 7 heinekens for fathers day lunch and my camera holding skills are a bit off.  

I have done the ballast for 80% of my track just a touch to go. After a fail on a switch I decided to skip them  

edit pic

[KenS]

UNitrack is the last thing you want to ballast. The track is too high.

Not necessarily true.  You can make Unitack look lower by filling around it with ballast (assuming the surrounding terrain is higher than the roadbed under the Unitrack).  I've seen layouts that did that to good effect.

However, I use Unitrack to avoid ballasting, so seems like entirely too much work to me.  If I were going to ballast, I'd be using some kind of flex track to gain the advantage of more custom trackwork.  I've done that in HO, and really don't want to do it in N.

[Martijn Meerts]

I do ballast track, but I can't say it's my favorite part of the hobby ;)

However, a well ballasted bit of track definitely looks real good.

[Dani]

I use Peco code 55, and I'll ballast and paint rails. I'm still testing different paints (Tamiya XF64 and Humbrol 160 seems to be the best by the moment for rails) and ballast (Woodland Scenics for sure).

[inobu]

You guys are kinda collaborating my comment. There is so much more you have to do to Unitrack it becomes such a pain. Blending the color, trying to paint over the dart semi glossy ties, one change affects something else. I'm not saying it can't be done just really hard and time consuming to get it right.

There are just some track that just don't take ballasting very well. I'm working on a project now and just dread trying to get it done.

Inobu