When I place the ballast on the track, I only use two tools...
I make sure the track is level. I merely pour the "dirt" over the track and use a fairly stiff paint brush to get the excess off the rail. This soil sets up extremely firmly. I use no glue mixing. Even the occasionaly heavy rain has a hard time washing this away. The major issue with it is the grime that splashes up on the track after a rain but that is what the MOW crew is for...
Lizard Attitude Railroad
Construction, page 2
The only tools I use to lay ballast
As I said, the backyard is covered in pea gravel. I have had 5 tons of red soil/decomposed granite delivered in the last year. I brought it all into the back yard via wheel barrel and mad a mound of it. I had some 4 X 6 scraps from a neighbor and made 2 small retaining walls. It wound up being a great play area for the kids and a good storage place of this material when I need it to repair ballast or use it as filler.
.
Note the photo above and how the soil/crushed granite looks. You can see that there is fine pieces of crushed rock. The above photo is freshly laid. The photo on the lower left shows ballast that has been down for awhile.
"Aged" ballast.
Light up your night! Go out and buy a Malibu light set. You get a varied amount of lights and a decent 88 watt [or less] power supply with a timer. You can run the outdoor wiring throught your layout [simply bury it]. The cable itself is excellent to power electric switches and your track layout also. I use the whole light assembly but you don't have to. I simply place the building over the light assembly. The transformer is weatherproof also.
It is nice to have the outdoor lighting independent of your train transformer so your village can light up with you running your trains.
The Malibu power amp also lights my MTH Tinplate lights that I use outside. You can see that I have some "sidewalk" that I am placing in front of my buildings as noted on the right. This is left over tile from our kitchen project. It will be surrounded with soil to give it a realistic look.
