Brown Medium Ballast Shake

Brown grit with a medium grain

The brown tone matches stone into which oil, rust from the rails and dust from bulk loads have soaked over years of service. This is how a bed looks that nobody has renewed for years: the color is no longer that of stone but earthy, and that is exactly what makes a line old before you stand the first wagon on it.

• The package holds 945 cm³ of loose grit, a tub with a sieve in the cap
• A medium grade of grain, a universal choice for most layouts
• A flat surface with no sheen, the shade darkens slightly once fixed
• It can be dosed straight from the tub, with no decanting into a dish
• It comes into its own off the track too: driveways, dumps, stone fills

A procedure that has proved itself

Pour a narrow strip along the ties and even the slope out into a regular profile with a soft flat brush. Level the grain between the ties, otherwise once it is soaked it will stand above the top of a tie. Then dampen the surface with water and a single drop of dish soap so that the grit does not float, and add thinned PVA glue drop by drop. By the next day the layer will have set enough to stand the touch of a finger and vacuuming around it.

How convincing it is rises when you use several shades on one layout. Brown belongs to old industrial spurs and sidings, lighter stone where building or tamping was done recently. A sharp divide between the two places does no harm, in a section under repair it arises just as suddenly.

Once it has dried, gather the unused grit back into the tub over a sheet of paper bent into a channel. The sieve in the cap at the same time prevents spillage during storage, so the package will survive even a journey in a toolbox.