Quick Questions

Joe, just a few questions real quick.

1) Does using the zip-lock bag and the dyes inside get onto the interior of the bag strong enough to change the perception of the color or tone of the ballast you are trying to color ?

2) How steadfast is the coloring ? I would think the dye is just a coating on the sand corrrect ?

3) When using the ballast, does a reapplication of any alcohol related products affect the coloring in any way?

thank you

 

Answers

Not really. If in doubt, just open the top of the ziplock bag and peer down inside. Early on when the bag is fresh, the dye tends to just roll right off and bead up. As the bag gets used, the inside starts to get a more rough sandpaper like texture, and the dye starts clinging to the bag inside more. Replace the bag -- I use a fresh bag for each fresh 1/2 cup of sand I'm coloring.

Rit dye is intended to be permanent and if you get it on something it's very hard to remove. Once it's thoroughly dry, it's set in place quite permanently. However, I can test it and see: 

1. Cover some thoroughly dry ballast in some tap water in a jar and let it sit for a week and see if any color leeches out.
2. Cover some thoroughly dry ballast in 70% IPA in a jar and let it sit for a week and see if any color leeches out.

My guess? Tap water will have no effect, but some color may leech out after standing submerged in IPA for a week. Soaking your layout track in IPA for a solid week should never happen, and if it does, you will have a lot more to deal with than just some ballast color leeching!

For our purposes, the dye is permanent and will not rub off the sand. As for how tightly bound the dye is to the sand I can't say, but it's more permanent than using latex or acrylic paint to color the sand.

The sand is in effect permanently stained the new color in a way that does not change the angular look of the sand grains. Painting the sand rounds it and makes the grains slightly larger.

I've not seen any problem from solutions that include IPA when ballasting with this dyed ballast. The track in the cover photo used an IPA solution in the ballasting and I never saw any dye leech out into the roadbed or subroadbed.

That said, almost all glue ballasting methods shift the ballast color slightly to make it a tad darker when dry. I adjust the tint of the ballast a bit with some PanPastel weathering to lighten it. In fact, weathering the track in any way shifts the tint of the ballast too. On top of that, in the great outdoors, light color shifts throughout the day, and photos all can have slight white balance variations.

Bottom line, if it looks right, that's good enough since it's almost impossible to be 100% precise on this stuff due to light color variations indoors, outdoors, and in photos.

Mr. Fumbles

Thank you Joe for the quick answers.

I am Mr. Fumbles and I was just wondering if any coatings inside a single use bag had any problems. I am leary of opening a bag of anything with the words "wet" and "dye" in the same sentence anywhere near or inside a house. 

Applying any alcohol products was a concern during the application process only if it affected the dye and caused any color runs or puddling. I don't think soaking in any IPA solutions for umpteen days is a concern for general use. I may be wrong but I am not seeing it.

pre-color

Where do you go for a color photo if you're modelling an era before color photography? How unreasonable is it to just get the earliest color photo you can find and wave your hands and say they used the same stuff decades earlier?

OTOH, if nobody alive knows what color the actual ballast was at the time, how's anyone going to call you on whatever you do?

Why 50 drops at a time?

Excellent research and article Joe.  I can understand why you add the dye in 50 drop increments at first when you’re working out exactly how to get the color you’re after.  But once you know, for example, that you need 400 drops of charcoal gray, why do it 50 drops at a time instead of just going for 400 in one pass?

It's for blending purposes

I'm doing it for blending purposes. I want to make sure the dye gets thoroughly applied in phases. Not sure it makes a difference, but I prefer doing it bit-by-bit.

@ joe

 Hi Joe ,  That grey stuff from lowes looks like it could work for SP ballast?  Does it have suitable sized grains for S scale? .....DaveB

Making your own bllast

Fascinating article and you make the process seem so easy. I wish it had been published a year or so ago. Well done.

Thanks

I'm really glad you did this article. If there's one thing I've got a lot of, it's sand. My front yard is pretty much pure sand. :D

While I don't know if it's the best type, I just couldn't see myself passing it up for anything I'd have to pay for.

Thanks and comments

Great article; Thanks.

A couple of comments:  1)  If you use your own sand, get a magnet, put it in a ziplock plastic bag, and run it through your sand.  I'll bet you pick up a significant amount of iron filings, which, of course, is not good around the DC electric motors in our locomotives.  I discovered some perfectly colored sand and gravel scree at the side of a mountain highway.  I did an abrupt stop, explained my crazy action to my wife, and brought home a couple of bags of it.  Yep, iron!!! so, it's in my river bottom and in other portions of scenery, only.

2)  I've used Rit dye for years on my scenery, but the caution is that, once it's on your fingers or fingernails, it takes forever to go away.  Ugh.

Ballast sources

This is basically what I am doing, minus the coloring. I go to the same local quarry where the NH got ballast for the line I’m modeling. I sift the stone right there, so I’m only taking home what I’ll use. It’s less than $20/ton. Needless to say I haven’t come close to that. I’ve also sifted dirt and cinder ballast from a part of the old line, and dirt from the town I’m modeling. All of which works fantastic.

Here’s a post I did of ballasting and weathering the track:

https://blog.newbritainstation.com/2019/12/tweaking-process-ballast.html?m=1
 

Randy

Silica Sand for Ballast

One should be careful sifting this material.  Silica dust is not good to breathe.  Best done out of doors and wearing a good dust mask. There is a lung disease called Silicosis. The fine dust accumulates in your lungs and never comes out which leads to serious problems.  Perhaps washing it before you grade it would solve the problem.  Once it is glued in place it is not an issue.

Even bags of sand meant to be mixed into concrete warn of this issue.

Play sand is safe

The sand listed as play sand is pre-sifted to remove the fine dust, since it's intended to be safe for kids to play with.

The fire pit sands also don't appear to have any fine dust either -- they appear to have been pre-sifted as well to remove the "dust" sized particles.

It's near impossible to make even a tiny dust cloud with the three sands I list. Raw silica sand no doubt will be different and will require greater care.

Dipping your toes

This operation of making ballast is a gamechanger in so many ways. One of the things a casual or small area modeler might be wary of is the initial cost near $45 for a package of sand and some dyes.

While walking thru Hobby Lobby yesterday I spotted a bottle of colored sand in a 1.5 pound package for $3. There was not any white on the shelf but after asking I was able to order 2 bottles of white craft sand and using the omnipresent 40% discount cost about $3.75 for 3 pounds of sand. Dyes were $4.50 a bottle so I grabed the two grays and am waiting for my order to arrive. 

The initial cost outlay for my foray into making my own ballast for now is around $15. This is just a " dipping of the toes " so to speak into the project. If I needed a lot or had some serious linear feet to ballast, I would definitely go with Joe's sources as they are absolutely cost friendly in the long run. The sand is produced/distributed by Tree House Studios.

https://www.hobbylobby.com/Crafts-Hobbies/Kids-Crafts-Activities/Crafts/White-Sand/p/23516

 

Paver Sand

Joe, love this article... I had written a little thing up a while back on my blog here about using paver sand. Good friend of mine has a triple deck Clinchfield layout and he taught me how he used paver sand to do all his ballast. Love the use of the RIT dye, I need to try that as I want my ballast a little darker and "dirtier" than what I get directly from the paver sand and have been using AIM powders and such afterwards to get that effect. Also, I like how you broke down the sifters and compared them to prototype ballast. I ended up doing the same and using the #30 as well so thanks for that confirmation. Once again awesome article...!!! 

realistic track

Ballast is essential for realistic track, second only to painting the rails.  This article highlights how subtle ballast colors are important for realism.  Authentic looking track enhances modeling. Making track look real is one of the cheapest and easiest things to do.  Author Lance Mindheim emphasizes the weathered look:

https://lancemindheim.com/about-us/weathering-track/

1/2 cup at a time?

Curious why you work with 1/2 cup of sand at a time?  Is that just an optimal amount given your approach?  Would working in bigger batches once you got your color down be more effective?  

More control

watching

Watching this subject

Very good, I've spent a bit

Very good, I've spent a bit of time colouring my ballast. And I like your sand suggestion as I was planning to buy a white ballast from DCC concepts and use washes and it worked well, but then I used diluted oil paints and although they took awhile to dry, the colors were very vibrate. I then wanted to spray a gloss varnish over it so the black wash would run to the cracks and then I would spray a dull cote over it to remove the gloss effect. The question is for me does the sand take the diluted oil paint. I will give it a go.

Below is photos from a couple of years ago but I'm excited to give the sand ago. It would be heavy like stone unlike the synthetic ballast and can be coloured and stone is hard to get in the size I need.   

pumice

I did a lot of ballast making for a club railroad in Santa Fe quite some time back and I used pumice since it will readily absorb the dyes. We cooked the pumice on the stove with the dyes. The pumice plant down the road had every size you could imagine..  Sand seems to me to be a surface treatment.

These days, I own a Braun crusher that is used for on site sample prep at mining sites. I crush black glass that I make in it and then grade to various sizes. It makes very nice coal loads . The glass comes out pretty smooth actually. The crusher can change grit size easily. I have the Chipmunk. It does 400 lbs an hour. I'd hate to see the Badger, it's bigger brother  running. The company that makes the tooling is so old that they still use mimeograph sheets for the safety stuff. 

Oil paint & silica sand

Yes, it does.

I made several shades with diluted oil paint many years ago.  I got a 30 pound bag of 70 grit sand for $3.00 through the sculpture class I was taking (special group purchase price) and still have most of it.  Plenty enough to make more now that I'm running out of the original batches.

How mixed?

Rick.

Can you give us a guestimate of how you mixed it? As has been mentioned you don't mix 30 lb at once. So, let me guess. A quart plastic zip lock bag? And how do you mix the oil paint. What colors to start with. I would guess it depends on the soil, but I also guess you start light and work darker as you mix? Till you get the right color? And how thin? I am a novice with this. But need to know enough to work on my layout. I do have oil paints and such. So need to buy sand/or find some? LOL

TMTV

Joe, that was great follow up by having a segment on TMTV about this topic...