Loose ballast = mech death

Dear ???

Think it thru:
- small rocks (which is what model RR ballast is)
- at/near wheel and mech level
- with enough motion and vibration to move them around/kick them up

= recipe for a single ballast chip to get up into the mech, and do some serious damage,
(or at the very least, cause a mech-stall/lock-up which you will tear your hair out trying to diagnose and fix...)

For your own sanity, and the smooth-running and longevity of your "paid for with hard-won cash" locos,
either ballast the layout properly,
or wait until you can...
(As per Lance Mindheim's reccomendations, a decent hit with spraycay and weathering can make a "track on plank" situation look far more "ballasted and finished" without the risks,
believe someone recently also mentioned using Stone "textured spraypaint" as a quick "temp ballast susbtitute").

Happy Modelling,
Aim to save the life of your loco mechs _before_ they get damaged,
Prof Klyzlr

PS the dust from un-glued/un-sealed "ballast" can also seriously mess with your wheel<> rail electrical contact...

excellent temp ballast ideas

Thanks Prof, those ideas for temporary ballast would  work nicely.

For the stone texture sparaypaint, I eould lift the track and spray a line onto the foam. It would look fairly decent.  I would not rush to drop the track on and hope the paint holds it down.  But, if some of the paint was wet and the track stuck, it could be cleaned off later.

Currently I have glued down new, unweathered track.   I plan to spray the track and overspray on the roadbed is fine by me.  I recently tried the Rustoleum Camouflage suggested by many people and the rail has a nice almost-but-not-quite black color.  It did not eat into the pink rigid foam.  I like it better than the rust red primer I had been using.