Kinross: Mindful ballasting...

I've taken a restful day to work on Kinross on and off, despite feeling tired. It's been a lovely tonic to work on something devolved from my 'day job' by being set in Canada rather than the UK...

GE 70t 35, seen under the PyD lighting lid, showing the track and ballast colouring to good effect.

Kinross, if you've not seen it on my blog before, is a new cameo layout set on Prince Edward Island, Eastern Canada. The island's railway was originally built to a gauge of 3'6" and quite twisty to minimise earthworks in the undulating landscape, later standard gauge but lightly laid. The island's motive power suited this lightweight track work, the Murray Harbour branch, where Uigg, and Kinross are located were one of the last bastions of GE70t use on the island.

Over Christmas I got the basic structure of the cameo layout built, and laid track. More recently I added the back scene, which really felt like the birth of the layout. I've been painting the track more recently, which is the foundation of further scenic work. I don't understand those that build wonderful models and take no time on preparing the track. I start by painting the sleepers - this is a three step job on a small cameo like this, which warrants a bit more effort than usual. I began with Humbrol 72, then dry brushed Humbrol 28 (see above). Today I added a wash of Humbrol 251 to bring out the wood grain and tone down the light grey dry brushing. As this was drying I used 251 and Humbrol 82 (matt orange) to create a rusty brown to paint the sides of the rails... both the wash and rail painting are done using a palette, so the continued mixing of the colour leads to subtle change along the length of the cameo, a lovely gentle variation which feels really quite natural, see below...

This dried quite quickly so I decided to look at ballast colour options... I had an interesting conversation with Chris about ballast - not only the physical choices on colour, etc, or even the lovely mindful process of applying and tamping the ballast into place - but more interesting, about visual texture. We agreed, I think, that the eye expects to see texture, so even if the grains are overscale, they work if they are consistent and neatly applied. I work hard to ensure there are no stray grains on the sides of the rail, around the spikes or on the ties themselves as these can distract and draw the eye away from the scene you're trying to recreate... an example of this is cinder ballast, where many resort to smearing clay, or using plaster painted to represent cinder just doesn't work for me... often the process of applying this surface leaves un-scale undulations, or ridges around sleepers etc. On Pont-y-dulais I was advised to follow Chris Nevard's approach but I just don't think this works for me, so persisted with using Woodland Scenics fine cinders. By keeping the finish neat, and hand painting the sleepers and rail as I have on Kinross, I think the result is a very believable and textured finish that balances well with the other scenic elements and stock used on the layout. Anyway, back to Kinross...

Out came the box, this box is old, I reckon 1980s old, an old Safeway Ice cream tub, that's my Dad's handwriting 'WS BALLAST' proclaiming this contains the hallowed Woodland Scenics supply that was so hard for us to easily acquire in the UK. My Dad moved away from using granite ballast, as this so often changed colour when the glue was applied, going green under most light! Woodland Scenics went darker, but not a different colour... anyhow, I do have a bag in here from my childhood - an unopened brown! Anyway, I still use the box for my own more recent purchased bags of the same product. I was pouring over the photos in Bill Linley's book to get a feel for the ballast on PEI, and whether I should use brown, buff or grey... gut said the grey, so that's what I've gone for...

In between ballasting through out the day, I also took the plunge, and painted on a horizon in emulsion on the back scene. I was concerned the water based paint my bleed into the printed clouds and cause a right mess, but I needn't have been concerned, the result is subtle yet pleasing. Without it, the sky obviously just ended at the edge of the layout, but with a small 1cm strip of paint, the two seem to blend and the eye feels like it's looking into the landscape, so I'm very happy and will remember this trick for future projects where a full photo back scene feels too contrived.

Finally, a shot of the layout under the sort of lighting it will have once we're allowed out again to shop! (I need some materials to build the lid for Kinross). This is the lid from Pont-y-dulais, so it doesn't fit properly, but the view here shows the back scene painting and ballasting and track painting produce a subtle yet effective result. 

I'm looking forward to spending a little more time on the layout tomorrow. I hope you're all enjoying the weekend. More soon..