1/87 HO Fruehauf 28yd. 27’ Round Nose Dump Trailer Late 1950s. Owen Coal.

[Lee Drennen]

Bit of an aside about “ballast magic” here for John.

It is designed for holding ballast in place on trackwork, and will work best in this application on full depth sleepered trains set track such as Peco or Hornby. It’s a very traditional technique that has been around since Pontius was a pilot…..
I used to put the ballast on, get the shoulders right, then glue it in place using dilute PVA with a drop of dish soap to break surface tension. The glue was added to the ballast using a garden mist spray or eye dropper.
The ballast magic product sounds exactly like cascamite, which was another way of doing it……mix cascamite with the ballast, then spray the whole with water, activating the glue.
Trouble is, both of these methods make a very noisy rigid track surface because the track is basically set in concrete. They are also extremely unforgiving if you need to re lay track. They also don’t work so well with hand built track that uses rivet and ply construction because the sleepers are much thinner, making ballast placement harder.
More modern methods, adopted by finescale modellers during the nineties, involved glueing track to a flexible sub support (camping mats were good) using rubber based glue and adding the ballast at the same time….ballast being died cork rather than crushed stone. This was much more compliant, so gave better track holding, and was very quiet in use. It is also much better for those using DCC control as you can actually hear the sound effects made by the kit when the trains are running.

Sorry about the interlude……

Wagon is looking good by the way Lee….

Thanks Tim for the complement and the information. I use Life Like Power-loc track that has the road bed already on it. I dilute white glue down to my liking then I paint it on pre road bed let it set for about 45 seconds then I sprinkle my N scale ballast on it. I like the way it turns out. That Cheap Power-Loc track has been on the Layout since 2012 and has not gave me a minutes trouble. When I expand my layout soon I’m going to try the Bachmann see how it does.

[Tim Marlow]

Got to be easier than the hand built stuff with very fine tolerances that I ended up working on Lee :thumb2:. I’ve only found one picture on line of the final layout I worked on. It pre dated camera phones and I didn’t have a camera at the time:disappointed2:

[JR]

Bit of an aside about “ballast magic” here for John.

It is designed for holding ballast in place on trackwork, and will work best in this application on full depth sleepered trains set track such as Peco or Hornby. It’s a very traditional technique that has been around since Pontius was a pilot…..
I used to put the ballast on, get the shoulders right, then glue it in place using dilute PVA with a drop of dish soap to break surface tension. The glue was added to the ballast using a garden mist spray or eye dropper.
The ballast magic product sounds exactly like cascamite cascamite, which was another way of doing it……mix cascamite with the ballast, then spray the whole with water, activating the glue.
Trouble is, both of these methods make a very noisy rigid track surface because the track is basically set in concrete. They are also extremely unforgiving if you need to re lay track. They also don’t work so well with hand built track that uses rivet and ply construction because the sleepers are much thinner, making ballast placement harder.
More modern methods, adopted by finescale modellers during the nineties, involved glueing track to a flexible sub support (camping mats were good) using rubber based glue and adding the ballast at the same time….ballast being died cork rather than crushed stone. This was much more compliant, so gave better track holding, and was very quiet in use. It is also much better for those using DCC control as you can actually hear the sound effects made by the kit when the trains are running.

Sorry about the interlude……

Wagon is looking good by the way Lee….

Excuse us Lee .
Tim .
The mention of cascamite, of course that's what that glue powder must be in their kit . I used to use the powered glue years ago , but as glues improved so much that was long forgotten.
Can understand the problem with it once it's fixed, and the additional noise it would attract with out the common place underlay now used .
Lee .
I was interested in the method you used, that shop kit seemed to novel from the point you mixed the glue powder in rather than applied it like would be normally done using IPA , a spot of Modge podge with some dish washer liquid in .

John .

[Mini Me]

Excuse us Lee, Got my two bits to add.......Gentle men, both methods work well and if you want to reduce the noise caused by the rigidity of the hard road bed, there is cork bedding available that goes down before you place the track and ballast......works as advertised. Here is a close up shot of it without the ballast in place.

[Lee Drennen]

All are very good ways it mostly depends on the Modelers desire. Rick I put foam board down on 1/4” plywood to quite the “Road Noise” with the Power-Loc and it’s great to add landscaping on as I did for my Bridge project. Here’s a pic of a old piece I tore off. I’m going to re-ballast my track soon and I will start a thread on it and we all can duke it out there but it’s ok here for now.

[Lee Drennen]

Excuse us Lee .
Tim .
The mention of cascamite, of course that's what that glue powder must be in their kit . I used to use the powered glue years ago , but as glues improved so much that was long forgotten.
Can understand the problem with it once it's fixed, and the additional noise it would attract with out the common place underlay now used .
Lee .
I was interested in the method you used, that shop kit seemed to novel from the point you mixed the glue powder in rather than applied it like would be normally done using IPA , a spot of Modge podge with some dish washer liquid in .

John .

John I don’t use Glue powder I use liquid white glue deluded a little.

[Tim Marlow]

Excuse us Lee, Got my two bits to add.......Gentle men, both methods work well and if you want to reduce the noise caused by the rigidity of the hard road bed, there is cork bedding available that goes down before you place the track and ballast......works as advertised. Here is a close up shot of it without the ballast in place.[ATTACH=CONFIG]n1173682[/ATTACH]

I was a cheapskate and used to use cork wall tiles for that sort of work Rick. It’s easy enough to cut the ballast shoulder using a sharp knife…..still much noisier than the compliant stuff though.

[Lee Drennen]

This guy is done

[Jim R]

Hi Lee
That looks great. Decals will bring it to life. As Rick said the wheels set it off perfectly.
Jim
For fixing gravel, sand etc on dios I like VMS Ballast Freeze. Comes in a dropper bottle.

[Jim R]

Crossed posts :smiling: The decals do bring it to life.

[Lee Drennen]

Crossed posts :smiling: The decals do bring it to life.

Thanks Jim. It’s been a very long time since I’ve done individual lettering with decals I just had to take my time I’m learning how to relax and take more time and patience now in HO scale than I did before. Glad you like it.

[Mini Me]

Nice finish on that Lee.........bring on the tractor. :thumb2:

[JR]

You've nailed it Lee.
Looks the part now .

[Lee Drennen]

Thanks guys I appreciate the complements