Model Railway Forum

I have seen lots of advice on how to ballast track but not how to do it across a board join in a way that didn't PVA the boards together. I came up with this idea.


I cling filmed a piece of plasticard and clipped it to the baseboard. My assumption being that the PVA/ballast mix will not stick so well to the cling film when I come to take it off and that the whole caboodle will permit the ballast to go right up to the join.

I was lucky in that the dowels which keep the two boards lined up was just to the right [as you are looking at this] so the plasticard could get flush up to the baseboard. I did have to put a small hole in the plasticard to accommodate the far left rail on the far left track which for some reason poked out further across the gap than all the others. Perhaps my long range vision is not so good?




This is phase one of the ballasting / scenic attempt.

I will let you know how accurate the assumption was and how it went tomorrow.

R-

Very similar to the method I have used in the past.
I used strips of plasticard sheet and drawing pins to hold them in place. Consider a smear of Vaseline on the plasticard to aid release.
I also used a stronger PVA/water mix for the ballast at each joint to bind it more securely.

Thanks Steve. I'll see how difficult the clingfilm is to get off. Might resort to the Vaseline idea tomorrow. R-

I removed the my lift out section and ballasted it separately.

On my lift-up section I just placed a bit of card in the gap and brought the lift-up section down trapping the card, then ballasted in the usual way, removing the card before the PVA had set hard - it needed a little bit of tidying up. Steve's idea with the Vaseline smeared on the card sounds good - I think cling-film would tear on removal. Nice to see the layout progressing Roger.