The Tedious Work of Ballasting

Just a quick update this week. I'm nearly done ballasting my track. I'm now on to that tedious step of cleaning all of the ballast off the top of the ties and off of the rails.

Ballasting is something that takes quite a bit of time for me.  I work at it very slowly ensuring that the application is neat and tidy. (but not too neat and tidy)  I've seen quite a few examples of model railroads who have, frankly, pretty poorly done ballast and it always seems to ruin the effect of realism for me. The problem appears to be that many people tend to rush through the process.  In my mind, trackwork is one of the most important and often most overlooked models on a layout and it's worth the time it takes to get it right.

I'll probably be doing a short tutorial video on preparing and ballasting track sometime in the future to show my technique. It's simple, but it works well for me.