JR-Chiisai

[cteno4]

Wonder what matte acrylic medium would do. I like it for ballast and scenery glue as it’s matte finish and also not rock hard like PVA gets with ballast so you can pick it out if needed later pretty easy with a dental pick.

 

did you try rinsing the ballast first? Wondering if rock powder may be causing the lighter dry color. It is a big change, especially with them saying it will not change color with glue.

 

jeff

[Martijn Meerts]

Pretty sure the VMS glue is some sort of acrylic medium, but obviously not matte. It's also a lot more expensive then the Koemo ballast glue. They do have 2 different types of ballast glue, 1 that goes rock hard, and 1 that keeps things a bit flexible. I went with the one that remains flexible, and it's very noticeable once the glue has dried. I do quite like working with this glue actually, it flows really nice.

 

I haven't tried rinsing the ballast, but I did notice when mixing 2 types, there is actually quite a lot of dust in it. I could try rinsing a bit of it and see what happens. I think the discolouration also depends on the scale of the ballast. I have N scale, TT scale and H0 scale ballast. I initially thought the N scale would be a bit too fine, even if it's to scale. So I got some TT scale as well, but that didn't quite look right either. The H0 stuff I obviously got for the H0 1067 / H0e layout. I'll also try gluing down some of that, to see the dicolouration there.

 

There is also a lighter shade of grey ballast, which I can also experiment with a little bit. In the end though, the darker ballast is more correct for steam era, so I guess I should get used to that 🙂

 

I will probably see if I can pick up a static grass applicator and some shades and lengths of static grass, and do another, slightly longer section of test track, but this time use the actual materials I would use on the layout, rather than just grab whatever I just happen to have around.

 

[Martijn Meerts]

 

A little more testing. This time I painted the track a different shade, I think it looks a bit close to the prototype like this. Maybe a little bit too dark, but I've mixed up a slightly lighter rust colour to try that as well. I think this is pretty close to where I want to be. I was thinking of dry brushing the sleepers with something like a lighter brown to bring out a bit of the molded detail, but I'm not sure yet. I don't have any lighter brown paint at the moment anyway 🙂

 

After painting the track, I added the ballast. I used a slightly lighter grey with a little more brown mixed in. It didn't look much different from the previous test, so I'll probably just stick with the previous mix. That one's a lot easier, since it only involves 2 different types of ballast. This ballast also darkened quite a bit after gluing, so it's probably normal. I do want to pick up some samples from a different brand as well to test with that.

 

After ballasting, I used the airbrush to add some rust colour around the rail and on the ballast. Here again I used a little too much. I was working with pretty crappy lighting, so I couldn't really see what I was doing all too well. After airbrushing some rust, I then painted the sleepers with some diluted black mixed with some rust.

 

I then tried to use the rust pigment again, but a bit more careful. The dark rust pigment worked fine, but it was a bit too dark. The lighter rust is a different brand of pigment, and wasn't as easy to control, so there's definitely a bit too much of it again. I'll probably pick up some additional shades of rust at some point. I'll probably also need to clear coat this, so the pigment won't wash away when gluing down the greenery.

 

Speaking of which, I (finally) ordered a static grass applicator and a bunch of static grass. I will be experimenting with that a bit once it arrives.