Ballast For A New Garden Railroad

[MVTerp]

Hello. Just joined the the forum hoping for some help.

 

I am looking for advice regarding ballast for a new garden railroad which I plan to start the work on in a couple of weeks. I’ll be using LGB track and DC power to rails for now. I had called our local stone supply place and they have crusher dust bulk or bagged at a good price so I went to see it today with the intention of ordering a delivery. I would say that what they had was at least 80% very fine grain dust.  From images I’ve seen online on garden railroad sites this wasn’t what I expected. Otherwise, the smallest gravel they carried was pea gravel. I checked one other local place, and their dust was essentially the same.  My plan is to use a trench of 4 by 4 inches for my roadbed, and while the dust I saw today might harden a bit with  moisture, I just can’t imagine it would lock my track in place.

 

So, I started calling around to local poultry feed supply stores to see if I could find crushed stone chicken/turkey grit in large enough bags to make it affordable. Living in suburban Maryland outside Washington, D.C., my options appear to be  limited. Places around here are mostly limited to 25 lb bags and smaller making the overall cost prohibitive. I have found a Southern States not too far away that stocks 50 lb bags of non-soluble chicken grit in limited quantities. They can special order whatever quantity I need. Still, the cost is going to be far more than I had expected (especially compared to the price of the dust at the stone retailer). I do need to visit them in person to ensure I can get an appropriate type of crusted stone grit.

 

I figure am going to need around 11 cubic feet for my initial planned layout

 

That all said, I have a few questions. 

Am I perhaps missing something about the dust which I have read can make make an ideal ballast. From my reading, I think dust is interchangeable with crusher fines (being a matter of local semantics).

 

Knowing that the ballast will have to be replenished periodically, the expense of using the chicken grit I can get around here is a serious concern. Would it be a wasted venture to use a base layer in my roadbed of the dust I describe seeing and topping that off with the chicken grit and using grit for ballasting the track itself? If this would work, what depth of dust could I reasonably use?

 

I have also kicked around the idea of trying to create a mixture of the dust and chicken grit. Any thoughts about that? Would a 50-50 ratio work? And any thoughts about an affordable method to do the mixing would be appreciated as well. 

 

Given our home owner association rules, I really don’t think I can entertain using something like crack resistant Quikrete instead of gravel for my roadbed as this would be deemed a permanent structure that would have to be approved.

 

I’m not a stickler for the exact scale of the ballast relative to my track and rolling stock, but I do want it to look at least somewhat realistic, and most importantly, functional.

 

Thanks in advance.

[Sean]

Take a sample of the stone dust home ( 5 gallon ) and make a test trench and lay some track and see how it holds up.

I have used it, it will splash up onto the track initially causing you to clean the track ..some mix it 50/50 with Type III bond glue .

This forms a shell like thing ..it can be hit with a hammer to break up, after a soaking..

[MVTerp]

Thanks Sean,

I’ll set up a test like you suggest with the dust.

[mistacabbage]

What did you end up using for ballast?

 

I live about an hour from you.  Any luck finding chicken grit at the Tractor Supply Co. stores around here?