Do Railroad Sidings Use Much Ballast

While for mainline and sidings i have used woodland scenics fine gray ballast i have yet to decide what to use on yard tracks.

Do railroad sidings use much ballast.

The sidings use a darker color. It also helps to know how things get the way they are. So the wuestion is now do i just use the same thickness for mainline and siding or should the siding and spurs be the same thickness which in turn would match their height. Track ballast forms the trackbed upon which railroad ties sleepers are laid.

Here you see how i spread ballast around an atlas crossover on the mainline in utopia. It s a pain but it makes a differance. Industrial spur ballast or lack thereof is another matter entirely. It is used to bear the load from the railroad ties to facilitate drainage of water and also to keep down vegetation that might interfere with the track structure.

A siding in rail terminology is a low speed track section distinct from a running line or through route such as a main line or branch line or spur it may connect to through track or to other sidings at either end. Sooner or later i will have to deal with ballast in my yard. I also change grain sizes using ho ballast on the mainline and n scale ballast on the sidings. The typical model railroad approach of using lighter ballast on the main represents some prototypes ok but definitely not all.

Sidings often have lighter rails meant for lower speed or less heavy traffic and few if any signals. The n scale ballast looks better with the code 70 and code 55 rail on the sidings. Then ties are stained with oak. The mainline here is code 100.

Then some aditional ties are stained light gray to simulate rotten ties. Ballast also holds the track in place as the trains roll over it. And if that work is done by a railroad contractor and not the railroad itself there is no reason they d use the same ballast source as the railroad itself. Having said that covered hoppers are among the cars that have gotten bigger and heavier in recent years so perhaps a food based industry would have had its siding get new rail and thus.

I then paint my track floquil rail brown. When i ballast yards i don t use ballast per say. Anyone maybe joe knows what did he used. Maybe the main and siding looked much alike when first built as it isn t necessarily cost.

In most photos i see mainline sidings are distinctly lower than the mainline while spurs in comparison to the sidings don t seem that much higher above the spus. I pretty much like how the roseburg yard appears on joe s siskiyou line layout. Many industrial sidings started with cinder ballast but over time dirt built up around the rails so if you look at most industrial.