Ballast! With a hint of electrical failure!

A few weeks ago, I finally turned my hand to ballasting and what a fuss it has caused me. I followed some tutorials on YouTube and learnt, to my frustration, that the advice and warnings given by the video creators could and definitely would come true.

Firstly, the glue gummed up three of the four sets of points on the layout, meaning that trains could only navigate into platform 2 and, owing to glue getting between the blades, stop right on the mouth of the headshunt. 

Secondly, the tutorials had also told me that it could take a while for the mixture of water, glue and ballast might take a day or so to dry. They weren't lying. I chose to do my ballasting at the end of September (NB Sometimes what I post is a few weeks after the event). This coincided with a sudden and rather weird cold spell. The consequence of this sudden cold spell was that the sticky wet mixture took nearly a week to dry. This meant that I could not detect the third issue caused by this foray into scenic work.

Thirdly, the fact that I watered the glue down to help it flow and spread between the pieces of ballast meant that the glue could also flow and spread between the joints in the track. This mean that on platform 1, when I restored the points to working order, trains would stop exactly halfway down the platform and no further. The track circuit was completely broken and anything within the station and siding could not pick up the current. 

I must admit though that it looks really good. I am impressed with the overall look of the layout now. 

At the time of writing, the 3rd of November, the line has been restored to working condition and barring a few little niggles, it is fully operational again thank goodness. 

This has been a very testing aspect of railway modelling and not one that I am keen to repeat. I would like to extend my thanks to the many people who contacted me with advice and guidance on how to fix the situation. I owe you all a lot of gratitude.