On Ballasting

What I've learned about ballasting so far:

1. It's always easier to add more ballast than it is to taking it away
2. Working around switches is not as hard as it seems, you just need a lot of light and a careful hand
3. Dentistry tools are very helpful!
4. Don't let the ballast creep up on the inside of the rails. If you test the track surface with a boxcar and it seems smooth, beware that a locomotive with deeper flanges will bump and scrape over the same section
5. Overall it seems better to ballast first then do the groundcover around it, since the width and slope of the ballast edges is more a matter of setting it up by eye than measurement
6. It's tedious but the layout looks so much better once it's done!

Just turned the layout around so I can better work on the rear portion. Painting is done, after it's dry I'll try to improve my ballasting technique based on what I've learned.