How to Ballast Fast and Easy with Martin Tärnrot

Hello and welcome to a Model Railroad Academy video. In this video we will ballast. And we'll make it fast and easy. I remember me and making my first layout, which is not this one, this is my sixth. I spent tons of time fiddling around with all the small stones and gluing them in place. And then I told my friend, "Oh my, I don't like this mid ballasting. It takes so much time." And he said, "Hey, how would you do that." And, and he came over here and he showed me and I thought, "Oh, so that's how you do it." "Yeah, that's how you do it." So that's the method I will show you now. This is the final result using the method presented in the video. The base material we will use is Styrofoam. And the track bed is Woodland Scenics ST1474. I'm starting by drawing a straight line on the Styrofoam to which I will align the truck bed. The glue I'm using is PVA white wood glue. It's a water-based glue. I use this glue both to fix the roadbed to the Styrofoam and the track itself to the roadbed. Add weights so the track gets properly pressed down against the roadbed and leave it to dry for an hour. When dry, apply glue also on the road bedsides. I'm using Proses ballast dispenser. It's the key to fast ballasting. For this module, I'm using Woodland Scenics Medium Buff. The medium size works well with this type of dispenser. Just slide it slowly along the tracks and it will distribute the ballast evenly. Then I'm also adding the ballast to the road bedsides. With all the ballast in place, we will now knock with a paint brush onto the rails. The vibration will compress the ballast and then it's really easy to remove the excess ballast using a vacuum cleaner with a sock over the nozzle. The sock allows us to collect and reuse the excess ballast. We will now reduce the water tension by spraying a mix of isopropanol and water. With the ballast properly wetted, we can now fix it using a mix of glue and water. This glue mix is applied using an eyedropper. I first glue one side, then in the middle, and then the other side, leave this to dry now overnight. I'm using an airbrush to spray paint my ballast. For this first layer, I'm mixing burnt umber with two third airbrush thinner. And the mix the paint with the thinner properly. I cover both the roadbed and the track with this first layer of brown paint. For the next layer I'm also adding a portion of black. This layer mainly goes onto the tracks. With the roadbed and the rails painted, it's time to also add some paint on the environments. I mix a light brown color based on burnt umber, white and yellow. Just cover everything with a wide brush. When the brown paint is dry then we're covering it all with grass glue. The first ground layer is Woodland Scenics Earth Blend T50. I cover mostly everything with this leaving just a few spots where I add Green Blend that's item T49. The green gives a nice variance in the ground color. I use a round, wide, flat brush to push the turf into the glue. Leave this to dry now for a few hours and then apply patterns of grass glue. This first layer is a 2.5 millimeter meadow grass. I use the Noch Grass Master 2.04 application of grass like this. If you're considering other devices make sure that they're over 20 kilovolt. For the second layer of static grass, I'm mixing in a six millimeter tall beach grass. This mix covers the areas not previously covered. The third and last layer is made from spots of glue which results in tufts. For this last layer, I'm just using the six millimeter beach grass. Let's finalize this diagram by adding the bushes and the trees. I hope you liked this free video tutorial. If you did, please level up and gain access to the premium videos here on Model Railroad Academy. See you there.