Homemade Ballast

Jake,

very nice photos. one question: how do you get access to the quarry without getting stopped or shot?

Gene 

Jake

Great 'How-to', but two questions:

Do you run a magnet over the clay before you put it on the tracks?  Iron 'Filings' are everywhere and do the locomotive gears and motor no good at all.

Do you 'heat treat' the clay before use to kill-off any undesirables?

Seeds. spores and critter's can all exist in clay (even if we can't actually see them) and while we do try for realism as modellers, a 1:1 mushroom is still just a little bit too tall to be passed-off as a tree, to say nothing about multi-legged livestock!

Komata

"TVR - serving the Northern Taranaki . . ."

Komata wrote:

Do you run a magnet over the clay before you put it on the tracks?  Iron 'Filings' are everywhere and do the locomotive gears and motor no good at all.    

Do you 'heat treat' the clay before use to kill-off any undesirables?

No I have not done either, Thanks! i never though of doing that. How could I heat treat it?

Bryan C wrote:

Question: In addition to the questions raised by Komata I was wondering if the clay doesn't "cake up" when soaking it with wet water and the glue mix? Does it really maintain its granular consistency?

No, it hasn't cracks as of yet and it has kept it's consistency, but since I'm again in the planing stages of a layout I've only tested it on a small diorama. I'll test it some more and see how it works out and I'll post some pictures.

Thanks guys!!!

After heat treating and using a magnet I tried my hand at it again, with good results. I was surprised to see so many metal filings in the clay, thanks Komata for that tip. 

You can see how dusty it was when I spread it on the tracks but after spraying it with wet water it washed of the ties.

Here's the end result. It didn't "cake up" or crack and I'm pretty happy with the colour and scale of it. It just needs a little cleaning off the rails and some of the ties.

I've been doing something similar, using a material called "stone dust", which is crushed limestone (I think) typically used when laying patio lockstone. I had several cubic yards left over from a recent landscaping project and sitting in my driveway - enough to ballast several layouts I think Like you, I simply sifted it to get the appropriate size. Your method for reducing the dust is a good one - I hadn't thought of that. I've found that this material readily absorbs the diluted glue without shifting (unlike commercial
ballasts). In fact, I don't even bother with the spray bottle anymore, I just apply the diluted glue with an eye dropper directly on the dry ballast and it just soaks in.