Hello all,
The parent corporation of the Buckskin & Platte Rail Road is the Consolidated Materials Group.
The CMG mission is to incorporate found objects into every aspect of the building of the BS&P RR.
One of the found objects is the ballast.
I found a parking lot in Central City, Colorado, that, through erosion of the nearby hills, has piles of gravel.
My initial harvest consisted of a 5-gallon bucket, shovel and a strainer from a lettuce crisper insert. The straner has holes of approximately 3/8-inch. I sifted the material into the bucket for further processing.
Because of the amount of dirt in the material I first filled the bucket with the harvested material with water, stirred with my hand and allowed to settle. Next, I removed the rock from the water into a strainer with 1/4-inch holes.
I allowed that to dry and then, using progressively smaller holed strainers, refined the material. Just like the prototypical quarrying operations.
This yielded various sizes of material from 1/4-inch to coarse grain sand size, which is perfect for HO scale ballast.
Because it is real rock, it does not float when glued in place and adds local realism to the pike.
Hope this helps.
