Weekly Photo Fun 1-8/1-14


Hah. That is very perceptive of you, because I did do considerable work on the ballast there, for exactly the reason you mentioned. The yard is done with Woodland Scenics fine gray ballast, but what I did with it was stain it in a 9x13 glass baking dish (which I do not use for food!) with some Minwax brand "Ebony" stain--the oil based, not water based, kind--diluted 4:1 with paint thinner. It's a smelly job, and the stain tends to make the ballast stick together in clumps. But it does give you a product that's uneven in texture and color, and just as you say, it's in between gray and black. Here's a picture from when I was doing the job (and it was in 2004! How we grow too soon old, und too late schmart!)

http://tmrc.mit.edu/progress/reports/2004/10/

The main line may have WS tan color ballast, but in some places I've experimented with staining gray ballast with Minwax water-based "Walnut" stain. That's more pleasant to deal with than the oil-based kind, but it turns out to be quite difficult to keep a consistent color. It's a pain in the neck and I don't recommend it! The yard, though, was worth doing.

If you try staining ballast, try not to let the stain soak evenly through the granules. The idea is to get a variety of tones, all mixed together after the stuff dries.
 
The weathering solution is there because as you can see, there's tracklaying going on at the back of the yard. For weathered ties that get a lot of oil and grime off the cars, I like to give them a few coats of walnut stain and some of the dilute India ink, so they're some indefinable black-gray-brown mix.

Just for the fun of it, here's that end of the yard as it exists today, with the 2004 picture visible on the computer screen in the background.

IMG_3274.JPG
 



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