# Ballast on Elevated Track



## Nick Jr (Jan 2, 2008)

I am in the process of building a LS elevated track. I have noticed on MLS some are ballasted. I am anxious to hear the positive and negative opinions on it, thank you.


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## John J (Dec 29, 2007)

The positive is It looks good. The only negative thing is your got to maintain it. 

One question.....Define Elevated? 

Are we talking Live Steam track?

Sections of a RR elevated to correct for a extreme slope? 


JJ


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## SteveC (Jan 2, 2008)

Nick

While not Live Steam (LS) here is one individual's method of using an elevated platform outdoors for a Large Scale (LS) layout.









Port Orford Coast R.R. - Richard Smith (PDF 25MB)[/b]


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## Nick Jr (Jan 2, 2008)

John & Steve, thank you for your input. I should have been more descriptive. By LS I meant Live Steam and by elevated I mean the whole thing is 3' off the grouind. Finding it more and more difficult to run the grouind track. 4X4 posts, stringers covered using 5/4 decking. There will be two loops, the inner is SS track so I can electrify it so I can run sparkies, the ouitter loop is Aluminum track for battery and live steam runners.


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## Totalwrecker (Feb 26, 2009)

Instead of decking, build it as a frame with ladders for the track and use screening to cover the gaps and add ballast. Water will pass through. 
Live steamers are messy, they spew stamoil out of their stacks, be prepared to clean that SS before placing a train on it. Oil attracts airborn crud. While Sparkies is a cute name, it's not so cute when the sparks under your wheels cause pitting in them. 
Greg E. suggests a wet swiffer pad to clean the rails. 

Happy Rails 
John


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## Nick Jr (Jan 2, 2008)

Totalwrecker, I have to disagree with you on two points: I have an almost ground level RR that has been down for several years now, some right on the ground and some elevated dependiing on the gradent of the land. I have also been using Rail Clamps and haven't had any problems with them at all. In addition I run electric and live steamers on the same track and have no pitting on my wheels either. I have all SS track mostly SS wheels, I use a 'Rail Broom' ocationally to remove the dirt that is kicked up due to heavy rain, other than that no oily crud from my steamers seems to cause any problems. I do appreciate your input, thank youi Nick Jr


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## Semper Vaporo (Jan 2, 2008)

My track was all elevated on 6-inch wide boards. The elevation varied from 3 ft to a bit over 4 ft. At first I just had the track laying on the boards and was fearful of it blowing off the structure. So I used fishing line to hold it down... the line passed under one rail, then over a couple of ties and back under the other rail and the ends were tied together under the structure. I tied down the middle of each 6-ft section of track and did not tie it tight, but left it kind of loose so the track could move a bit in response to thermal changes.

I had some problems with this arrangement. The boards were not perfectly smooth themselves (grain variations created some tiny raised pieces of wood, and there were very slight variations in thickness or cupping where the boards joined at their ends, that would snag a tie being drug by thermal changes and cause the track to get STUCK there and further expansion then pushed other sections the other way farther than maybe they would have. Sometimes this caused the track to get pushed toward the edge of a curve and sometimes it caused straight sections to be a bit of an "S". Not a big deal, but not wanted either. Then the opposite thermal reaction of shrinking when it cooled did other problems. Again ties would snag on imperfections in the wood or at joints in the lumber and then the track would separate at rail joints (I only had the slip-on folded spring-meta clipl joiners). This led to a SERIOUS wreck dumping one of my Aster Mikes on the ground.

I then decided to ballast my track. I used Rose Granite "Chicken grit" for ballast... a dark pink color rock sold to feed to chickens so they can chew their food in the gizzard. It looks just like the ballast used on the local Union Pacific RR line through town here, and the "Medium" size is pretty much to scale!

This reduced the noise of wheels running on the rails and really looked nice. It also eliminated the problem of ties snagging on imperfections in the wood and joints so I no longer had much problem with joint seperation.

But there were problems too.

Being "Chicken grit" the birds just love it! Sparrows especially! I think of all the ballast I lost to nature, some was lost to wind and rain, but the most was consumed by birds. It was fun to watch the birds line up on the track, 5 or 6 at a time and IN UNISON, hop down the track, stop and peck at the ballast to get a rock or two, then hop three more times and do it again. Nice little "train" traveling do the ROW at a slow pace.

I lost SOME due to wind, but not as much as I thought I would. To slow the loss caused by rain washing it off, I put some lawn edging all around the wood structure at about 1/2 inch height. This did not interfere with viewing the trains, but did hold the ballast on the structure, but I am not sure I would have lost all that much from rain wash.

The biggest problem I had is that the track is lighter than the ballast rocks and so it really would "float" to the top of the ballast and the plastic ties I have are thin and this exposed the fact that the ties were so thin and it didn't look good to see the thin ends on top of the ballast. But the worst problem was that the places where the fishing line was tying the track down stayed down, but between the tied down points the track floated to the top and this made my track into a shallow rollercoaster... half inch humps every 5 ft. Since the joints were at the peaks of these humps, they tended to "Tent" there and that caused derailments sometimes of the front truck of my engines (never a catastrophy, just a frustration to have to stop and re-rail the pilot truck every once in a while). I figured that tying it down at more points would just lead me back to the problem of thermal expansion causing kinks and joint separations.

I cut most of the fishing lines to let the whole track float to the top and that eliminated the humps, but meant I had to periodically go around the track and try to shake the track back down into the ballast... and that was a futile effort, as shaking one area while I pushed down, just shook the whole track and the rest of the track would "bubble up" to the top again. I found it better to just keep adding ballast over the top and use a small paint brush to dress the rocks down between the ties and make it look pretty.

I added ballast every spring as part my annual "start up" routine, but my 250 ft of track only used one bag per year... the whole track took 3 bags to ballast it the first time.

I know a few people that are using various methods to try to keep the ballast from leaving the area, one is using glue and another is using a concrete additive. My assessment of their efforts is that the more they try to "nail the ballast and track down" the more problems they have. For the one using the concrete additive to make the ballast adhere to itself, it is on the ground and the dirt is washing out from under this concrete making it look like a really sloppy looking "bridge" over lots and lots of small gullys and the material is cracking and falling apart. It does not look good, but he is still working on the water/additive proportions and has not given up yet.

Nature just does not like to let us nail things down outside and the track is still trying to MOVE and that makes for bends, kinks and separations.

"MY" recomendation is to just pour the ballast over the track, brush in down between the ties and expect to do it again every spring. Let the track truely FLOAT. Wind and rain won't do that much damage, the birdies will sing in the wee hours of the morning to pay you for your accommodations and your track will look pretty good for most of the year and you will have less problems with kinks and separations.

I'd also recommend to make the elevated structure as WIDE as you can. Derailments happen sometimes and the train needs a place to roll to a stop as opposed to making an abrupt stop after falling 3 or 4 feet.


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

Have not seen tests to see if wheel pitting (usually high current locos) on SS is affected by a film of oil. 

I do know that the oil that LS will throw about really makes Aristo SS slippery! I got some oil on my 3.4% grade, and a single loco could not go up by itself!. 

Swiffer is a great cleaner/degreaser on my SS, fast, easy, cheap. 

Regards, Greg


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## Nick Jr (Jan 2, 2008)

Vaporo, you have a PM, thank you Nick jr


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## Rail Planet (Jan 22, 2012)

I always thought this was a good method: http://youtu.be/0MfKx2kqkps


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## Chris Scott (Jan 2, 2008)

Finest, simplest, strongest and fastest way (IMHO) to build, and the most economical way to build an elevated layout. Adaptable to either ballast or deck surface.


*Prefab benchwork for the DC&M
*http://www.mylargescale.com/Communi...fault.aspx


A porous deck for the DC&M
[/b]http://www.mylargescale.com/Communi...fault.aspx
Those 8'x8"x1/2" rails are just like using glulam beams - laminated wood - that will easily carry the 8' span and very much more than capable for the deck and track load. 
*Thanks to Steve Seitel for his inspiration, photos and answering all my questions. *


























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