Do Railroad Sidings Use Much Ballast

First i nip off ties about every 5th one on each side of track to cause ties to look uneven.

Do railroad sidings use much ballast. I also change grain sizes using ho ballast on the mainline and n scale ballast on the sidings. I then paint my track floquil rail brown. Track ballast forms the trackbed upon which railroad ties sleepers are laid. The typical model railroad approach of using lighter ballast on the main represents some prototypes ok but definitely not all.

Here you see how i spread ballast around an atlas crossover on the mainline in utopia. While for mainline and sidings i have used woodland scenics fine gray ballast i have yet to decide what to use on yard tracks. Then some aditional ties are stained light gray to simulate rotten ties. Then ties are stained with oak.

Sidings often have lighter rails meant for lower speed or less heavy traffic and few if any signals. The sidings use a darker color. A siding in rail terminology is a low speed track section distinct from a running line or through route such as a main line or branch line or spur it may connect to through track or to other sidings at either end. In most photos i see mainline sidings are distinctly lower than the mainline while spurs in comparison to the sidings don t seem that much higher above the spus.

Many industrial sidings started with cinder ballast but over time dirt built up around the rails so if you look at most industrial. Industrial spur ballast or lack thereof is another matter entirely. When i ballast yards i don t use ballast per say. It s a pain but it makes a differance.

It also helps to know how things get the way they are. Ballast also holds the track in place as the trains roll over it. So the wuestion is now do i just use the same thickness for mainline and siding or should the siding and spurs be the same thickness which in turn would match their height. The mainline here is code 100.

Sooner or later i will have to deal with ballast in my yard. It is used to bear the load from the railroad ties to facilitate drainage of water and also to keep down vegetation that might interfere with the track structure. The n scale ballast looks better with the code 70 and code 55 rail on the sidings. Passing siding would get stone ballast but that track was rarely cleaned so the stone ballast soon was hard to distinguish from cinder ballast.

Maybe the main and siding looked much alike when first built as it isn t necessarily cost. I pretty much like how the roseburg yard appears on joe s siskiyou line layout. Anyone maybe joe knows what did he used.