Track profile book

[Trainman203]

Today, almost all model railroad  ballast you see represents grey crushed granite, no matter the period or locale.  Crushed granite might be a widely used product in the present day, but I recall 50 years ago seeing pea gravel ballast down here on the Gulf Coast, hundreds of miles from any naturally occurring bedrock of any kind.  And 10 miles from the coast itself where I was, lesser used spurs had oyster shell or sand ballast.  Gravel pits associated with river beds were only a couple of hundred miles away up in our "Florida Parish" region, and oyster shells were available in mountains of them.  I'm sure other parts of the country had their unique locally available ballast product too.  I see cinder ballast mentioned a lot, but down in Louisiana we were in oil burner steam engine country so there wasn't any of that around.

For a long time I wasn't sure if my memory was playing tricks with me, but last year through the Missouri Pacific Historical Society I secured a 1943 Gulf Coast Lines track profile book, which upon reading showed that the entire NOT&M used mostly pea gravel ballast.

To wit, to make my layout regionally correct, I made some HO scale pea gravel ballast by mixing equal parts of Woodland Scenics fine tan and fine brown ballast.  I tried it on a little used tail track at first and the results were great, so I've done about 90 percent of the layout using it.  I have not yet found fine white ballast for the oyster shell spurs (and roads and parking lots) but I sm sure someone here will direct me to the right product.

A track profile book for your favorite railroad is a great resource if you can find one.  The name is somewhat misleading.  It is a mile by mile account of all mains and branches listing mileage between depots, rail weight, ballast type, presence or non presence of tie plates.  There are also mile by mile schematic track plans showing Spurs and what industries they served, passing tracks, and car capacities of the Spurs and the passing tracks.  There are bridge descriptions and weight limitations, as well as the very few and gentle grades there were in a few places.

If you can find such a book, it would be a gold mine of information to turn an average model railroad into an operationally viable recreation of a real railroad.

[Len]

There used to be, may still be as far as I know, some stretches in Vermont that were ballasted with crushed marble tailings from the numerous marble quarries up there. Some was white, some pink, and made quite a contrast to the granite and cinders you usually see.

Len

[Trainman203]

That's exactly what I'm talking about, locally available material.   Find the track profile book for that road and you will not only verify the material but where it changed to another.

[ALCO0001]

In the Detroit metro area you would see slag as ballast in the old days from the steel mills from Auto manufacturing and all the steel they used in making tanks for WW2 until they found out nothing would grow where they put the slag. Good and bad in different ways.They can no longer use it.

8)Jack

[jward]

in Pennsylvania, the prr ballasted their yard and branch line tracks with cinders. to this day, you often see spurs with black sandy ballast, though the tracks that see a lot of use have been dug out and reballasted during the conrail years. the p&le was a big user of steel mill slag for ballast. it was grey in colour like the current ballast, but was porous like pumice with lots of air pockets.

[Len]

Trainman203 said:

If you can find such a book, it would be a gold mine of information to turn an average model railroad into an operationally viable recreation of a real railroad.

And just where does one find such a book??

Len

[jward]

you might try the historical society of your favourite railroad, they often have engineering documents preserved. another possibility would be the library of a good civil engineering school.

[Trainman203]

I got mine through the MoPac histoical society.  You may have to join such a society to have access to this kind of material but if you are interested in being accurately prototypical to a specific line in a specific time and place it is more than worth it.

I also got a two volume book of company engineering standards for every building, culvert and  switchstand you can imagine.

I am going to start a topic about historical societies.