oily

Hello

My husband and I live in PA also. We have done what you have suggested. The results were good. We look for an area with the finest cinders to help reduce the amount of sifting. If you model in HO it's much easier to sift the material down to scale than it would be for N. The same goes for coal. Lately we have been buying the material from Arizona Rock & Mineral or Scenic Express. If you do decide to gather your own cinders be cautious of insects in the cinders and any magnetic material which can foul up a locomotive.

Real coal

Conducts Electricity

Hi Kh25,

As a scenic detail, coal presents no problems.  However, if used as ballast...

Coal is carbon and will conduct electricity.

You might not be able to do block detection because of the current flowing thru the coal.

The heat generated by the current flow could cause the rails to expand or, worst case, start a fire.

I use black sanded grout for this purpose........

.....as seen here:

Peter

you nailed it

Another suggestion

At Michael's, they have a couple pound bag of black sand, which is actually faceted and reflects light in certain angles.   You would need to price vs. grout to see which is the better value.

Coal is Corrosive

As Mike's club discovered, coal is corrosive.  I've seen old steamers that have been eaten up by coal residue that wasn't cleaned off when the loco was taken out of service.

I used real charcoal for

I used real charcoal for ballast from old charcoal canister from the cars we serviced.

I dried it real good for gas fumes in an oven

After ballasting the track i had an Athearn F8 stop on the cut between blocks and make sparks

This started the coal to smoke and burn

So i say no do not use

coal isn't particularly corrosive

Sanded Grout

Peter,

Nice job.  But I have a question.  Grout is normally mixed with water to form a paste.  I assume that you used dry grout.  What did you use to "seal" the scene?  And what kept the grout from turning into a paste with a flat appearance when you sealed it?

Easier in larger scales, I guess?

Maybe a scale coal load is tougher to do in HO or smaller scales?

I can't recall where I got it, but a while back I found a great bag of crushed coal that looked perfect to me for O scale. I covered the plastic coal load on all the ten-wheelers I use on my layout with  layer of white glue, dipped them upside down into a bowl of the stuff and let it dry. I then pulled each out, flipped them and chipped off the stuff that didn't look right as a pile. Very little work or cost but the finished effect was worth it a hundred fold.

I then found some cinders (I think Woodland Scenics) and sprinkled them onto the footplate and at the base of the coal load on the tender decks.

@Scott... the shredded bags with coal

is also my experience...  They ended up as Coal loads with various sorted sizes.

In my area, we have a stone quarry... for concrete & asphalt aggregates.  The driveway is coated with a powdered dust that could be used as such, but the color is certainly wrong... and coal also looks a bit glassy

I do like the sanded grout appearance... at least photographically.

More on coal... my mother grew up with a coal-fired stove... the ashes were used in the garden - AFTER unburned bits were removed... the unburned coal is toxic to plants (Probably us, too).

coal ballast

coal was not a great ballast. It was a valuable commodity for sale. Cinders and other waste ended up in yards and secondary tracks and it did control weeds somewhat.My grandmother told of walking to and from school with an old pillowcase and collecting the coal that fell along the tracks for a few free BTU's. I'm sure she was not the only one. Anthracite coal was very low sulfur and probably would not corrode track as much but it still would be conductive. Even very small sizes of coal had uses in industry and was sold. For ballast you are much better off with a commercial product but real coal looks great as a scenic element forl loads and piles etc. cant beat the shine but it can be done with gloss paints or clear gloss nail polish.

As for shine... gloss paints may work

but the coal lumps have a shape that I find doesn't get represented in Any commercial product.

I, too, have picked up coal fragments (from the CNJ terminal in NJ, and Strasburg RR in PA) for my landscaping... but Not on the ground.  Mine is used as coal loads, Glued in place on removable 'platforms'... so none gets lost.

Sanded grout application notes......

......follow. 

Grout is basically a type of powdered cement that is used to bond ceramic tiles together by filling the spaces between the tiles. It comes in many colors. SANDED grout adds fine sand to the mix and is used to fill in gaps in large floor tiles up to about a quarter inch.  I’ve only ever used sanded as it has texture. Plain grout has none. 

To apply I used a sieve to spread it evenly about where I wanted it. Next I oversprayed the area with wet water (water with a bit of detergent added) getting it really saturated but not runny. Then I oversprayed again with some diluted white glue 8 parts water 2 parts glue. The grout will have absorbed the wet water by the time you do this so again saturated but not runny. Once it’s all dry you are done. I discovered if you don’t add the glue to the water the dried grout is very brittle. The glue gives it some flexibility. 

I also use various colors for ground cover. Sieve it out over wet plaster or latex paint getting a nice rough texture and again oversprayed with the diluted wet glue. Once dry it makes a great surface to add static grass to.

I pretty much use it for everything. It makes great looking dirt roads. 

Thinking outside the box is fun. Enjoy.....…

Peter

Thanks for the reply, Peter. 

Thanks for the reply, Peter.  I will try this when I get to this stage.

What about the heavy metals

What about the heavy metals like Arsenic and Mercury, are we putting our health at risk by using cinders for ballast?

  "My grandmother told of

My wife's grandma said during the depression she lived along the SantaFe outside Chicago and the firemen would toss out a few pieces of coal as they went by.....DaveB

If you don’t mind I would

If you don’t mind I would like to turn this question around.  Would Woodland Scenics cinder ballast work to represent coal?

Rick 

For Rick

Hi Rick,

Yes it can work - I've used to to represent dropped coal fines on my O-scale narrow-gauge Corrimal Colliery Incline layout. The foundation layer was HO ballast from a variety of manufacturers then with a thin layer of cinders over the top. This lets some of the bigger stuff "poke its head through", giving the impression of some larger "dropped stuff" and also makes the WS bottle of cinders go a lot further. The track is largely buried so the ties and code 100 rail is heavily camouflaged.

It would probably work best for dropped "lump" coal in N or as smaller "nut" or "pea" sized coal in HO. Prior to WW2 the mines made most money from "lump" coal that was sold to industry. Smaller sized coal such as "nut" or "pea" was largely sold to the domestic heating market. Any coal much smaller in size was either tipped at the mine or converted to coke. There was no money to be made in coal "dust". Coal distributors would probably have piles of coal in different sizes at their coal yard.  

Some photos of how it works as ballast

If the colour appears too light, a few drops of a dark iso-propyl alcohol/india ink mix can help to darken the cinders to your required shade of "coal black". But remember coal black isn't really a "BLACK black".

Hopefully that might provide some inspiration for you,