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.

Landscaping and Roadscaping

Recently I started ballasting the track, starting from the front left and working around the back of the layout. So far it's proved much easier than applying the ground-cover flock, which just seems to want to clump together.

Today I mixed up some more patching compund and applied another layer to the road, smoothing out the areas that needed it. I've also finished adding crossing boards to the level crossings. I didn't have any curved pieces so for here and the other road crossing I cut pieces of thick card and glued them down. Later I'll paint and surface them to match the road.

Also finally got around to improving the rear part of the layout, and adding a level platform for the switching tower, which you can see temporarily perched up on the hill. After this coat is dry, next steps are sanding and painting, then continuing with the ballast along the section of track pictured above.

Belated Update

 Starting work on a freight depot, where boxcars are unloaded and transferred to trucks. The platform edge is a plastic Peco piece, the bulk of it is layers cardboard, and the boards are balsa wood.

A four-track crossing, started adding balsa wood slats.

First test of ground flock over green paint.

Weekend Update: Painted

Finished the undercoat, patched a few spots, and laid down the road. Now, another round of sanding before another basecoat on the newly patched areas! The road will be a more sandy color of brown than the undercoat, and will get its own ground cover.

Weekend Update - Plastered

Quite a big update from the last post: I've added a layer of patching compound to the hills, and primed the baseboard. The plaster layer went on fairly easily, I just massaged it into the cloth. I did have to cover the track with masking tape before I started though.

Note to future self: prime the boards before cutting them, and then do touch-ups later!

Next comes some small patches around the bases of bridges, and putting a coat of brown base paint (which as you can see I've tested on the small hill) over everything.

Plaster Test

Tried out some patching plaster on the small hill, and it seems to have worked very well. The texture is nice and rough and it went on very easily. I mixed it a little wetter than the package instructions and smoothed it out using a latex gloved hand.

Tunnelling through the Hills

There's just no easy way to conceal an access panel on the top of a layout. You have to disguise a rectangular panel with a natural-looking landscape, and I just couldn't figure out out to do it convincingly. So out comes the drill and the saw, and there's a hole behind the tunnel and in the side wall for access. I put plaster cloth over it all, and I think it looks much better than trying to have access from the top.

I didn't leave much room to the side of the curve that runs alongside this hill; I'll have to be very careful when surfacing it not to run out of side clearance.



Here's a shot of the entire layout. All the hills are covered in plaster cloth, next comes spreading a thin layer of material to seal it, fill in gaps here and there, and give it the right texture.