Ballasting Help

[MR536]

I am attempting to use percolated coffee grounds as ballast in my large New River Coal yard. The color is perfect for a heavily oiled track-bed. The problem I encounter is that, since there are oils in the coffee grounds, the regular ballasting methods of applying alcohol followed by a diluted glue solution will not keep all the grounds together. After drying, when I use a vacuum to suck up the excess, some large pieces of ballast are removed. Obviously the oil effect of the coffee grounds doesn't allow for good adhesion...Scenic Cement is another failure.  What can I do to remove the oil from the grounds prior to ballasting?"

[Jim Banner]

Acetone from your local paint dealer will remove most oils and it evaporates quickly as well.  However, acetone is flammable and should be used outdoors.  Breathing the vapours can be bad for you health.

What you describe can also be caused by not using enough glue/water mix or not having enough of it penetrate for other reasons.  A couple of standard remedies for this are adding a couple of drops of liquid detergent to each ounce of glue/water mix or adding some alcohol to the mix (methanol or ethanol, sold as wood alcohol or denatured alcohol work equally well.  So would a shot of Canadian Rye, but there are better uses for that.)  A friend swears by this method.  He uses about 10% alcohol in the water he mixes with white glue.  I tend to stick with the liquid detergent.  Both of us add enough glue/water mix to saturate the ballast and have it running out the sides.  You might want to try either or both of these remedies before using the acetone.  If one or the other works for you, it is a lot less trouble.

Now a question for you.  I am familiar with oiled streets, a terribly mess process that the city used to inflict on us each spring until they finally got around to paving our street.  But I am not familiar with oiled ballast.  Can you tell me where they used it and why?

Jim 

[MR536]

Hello Jim

First I would never do that to a good shot of Canadian Rye    I would savor it....as for the oily track sections....I was looking at photos that were taken some years back of a coal miming company something on the scale of the New River company that many of us have.  What was interesting was an area approx 50 feet to the entrance where the Loco would rest until it was detached from the cars and was leaking oil all over the tracks and ballast.  This may have been poor maintenance on the part of the yard boys or the mechanics but it did indeed cause one heck of a mess.

The photos were black & white and I had them for a short while as they are part of a collection my oldest cousin keeps...I will see what I can do to retrieve them back so I can post them here.  All I was trying to do was replicate the scene using good ole Folgers leftovers.

Marv

[Doneldon]

MR-

You must have gotten into this game a loooonnngg time ago if there were only 535 model railroaders ahead of you!

I'd be careful with the coffee grounds. Like any organic substance coffee grounds can harbor bacteria and fungi.I would expect that perking your coffee would kill most but not all of them (they are exposed to sub-boiling water for a only relatively short time). So they might begin to grow their own weeds between the ties. Scenically that could be great if the growth is green, but it's more likely to be black or some shade of gray.

I suggest that you bake your grounds in a medium oven for 30 minutes or so. This will finish the killing as well as drying he grounds completely. Being bone dry will help them absorb more glue water and stay in place better. In addition to the dish detergent, add a little Lysol to your ballast liquid. That will provide some ongoing disinfectant protection which alcohol can't do as it evaporates too readily. You might want to add just a slight gloss to the ballast in the center of your roadbed to represent the latest drips of oil and gunk.
                                                                                     -- D

[MR536]

Thanks D

Started with my first layout with help from an uncle when I was 11....now 63....gone through a few since then.  As I told Jim...this oil mess reminded me of an old oil field after it lost its load...hehe

I am going to try both methods (Jim's and yours) to see which works best for the dilemma I have created.  I did as you said earlier in another post...combind both a Gravel and Coal yards together....with a complete city on the other end.  This 4X8 is slowly running out of room. 

Thanks to the both of you...this is a real help for me...appreciate it much

Marv

[CNE Runner]

I just don't know whether using coffee grounds is a good idea. Coffee grounds are an organic substance and are subject to decay (and, as was mentioned, harbor bacteria). I have used screened, and baked, sand/soil on model railroad roads with great success. However, it must be stated that sand/dirt (properly perpared) is largely an inorganic material.

How about this: Try using the darkest commercial ballast you can find. Install it in the usual way. Now come along with some weathering powder(s) to get the appearance desired. Failing that, you could use regular ballast and color it with liquid shoe polish...something I have never tried (excepting as a stain on structures)...hmmm, another 'rainy day' experiment to try.

Regards,
Ray