Gray Fine Ballast Bag

The weathered gray almost every scene will take

A neutral gray tone matches crushed stone after several seasons outdoors, when rain has washed the sharp white fracture off it and dust has given it a flat surface. That is precisely why it is the most universal shade of the whole range: it does not shout, it does not try to color a scene and it lets the equipment and the vegetation standing on it come to the fore.

Where a gray ballast suits best

• a main line with a regularly maintained bed
• the made-up areas of a station, a transshipment point and freight ramps
• stone rubble under a retaining wall or along the body of a line
• a base layer which can later be colored to any tone

The universality also has a practical consequence: if you are not sure what shade a scene will need in the end, start with gray and fine-tune the color only after fixing. You shift a weathered gray toward brown with a brown wash, toward black with a pigment imitating soot and toward light with a dry dust. The soaking is added gradually, so that the layer stays breathable and does not form a compact crust; it is best to let the binder soak in by itself from the edges into a dampened area.

In the smaller scales the fine fraction also suits places where coarse stone would come across as boulders, that is paths, track panels at halts and the areas between buildings. In the bag there are 353 cm³ of material.

A note on stock: the neutral tone is used up the fastest of all, because it serves as a base and as a filling at the same time. It pays to have more of it at home and to mix blends from it into which only small proportions of more pronounced colors are added.