Cinders Fine Ballast Shaker

Cinders were the ballast of poor tracks

In the era of steam, an enormous quantity of burned coal residue arose in fireboxes and under grates. Nobody hauled it to a dump when it could be used straight away: it was spread under storage tracks, on industrial sidings to factories, around engine houses and on footpaths along the line. It was a cheap solution and one at hand, even if technically worse than crushed stone, because cinders break down into dust over time and drain water less well. That is exactly why they never got under main lines.

What such a surface looks like

The color is dark, gray-black going toward brown, the surface is fine and packed, without the sharp edges that quarried stone has. Between the tracks in a depot it merges with grease and ash so far that the boundary of the ballast is almost lost. It gives a model something that is hard to achieve with clean stone, namely the impression of a neglected working back yard where people work and do not tidy up.

Where the material belongs on a layout

It serves best around a turntable and an ash pit, on the tracks by a water crane, in the yards between workshop buildings and on the paths the staff walk along. It can also be used as a loose load or as a pile by a boiler house. It is best spread in a thin layer with the base left showing through at the edges, because a neglected surface is nowhere of the same thickness. Credibility is also helped by a few worn paths across the layout and by several spots where the dark surface passes into mud or into thin grass; a sharp edge looks false here. Glue and other materials are not in the delivery.