Diorama FX Landscape Texture Granite Grey 2-5mm

Granite coarse grade for man-made terrain

Granite Grey in the coarsest grade has the cool gray tone of broken stone, which is exactly what man-made terrain needs: the ballast bed under the ties, the handling area by a loading ramp, the hard strip along a factory fence or the pile of aggregate by a crusher. While a natural slope will take a certain disorder, a technical surface has a logic of its own, and that is what makes it believable.

The ballast bed

Ballast is poured only after the rails are set, and always in two steps: first fill the space between the ties, and only then build the sides up into a gentle slope. The top edge of the slope should be straight and parallel with the track, the bottom one loose instead. Sweep the surplus off the tops of the ties with a brush before the glue goes on, because a grain sitting on a tie gives the handwork away at first glance.

Fixing it without shifting

A poured surface is flooded with very thin glue with a drop of dish soap in it; without that the solution just rolls off the grains. Drip it from a pipette from a low height and never pour it in a stream, which cuts a channel and upsets the whole profile. Let it cure overnight and only then put any load on the surface.

Dirt according to service

New ballast is light and sharp, ballast in service darkens with grease and dust. Decide which state you want and tone accordingly; the strip right under the rail tends to be the darkest. Make the stains from drips spotty and irregular, as a continuous dark stripe along the whole length looks unnatural.

Where else the material serves

Away from the track it suits the backfill around a manhole cover, the surface of an aggregate dump and the road leading to a quarry. In each of those cases the edge of the surface is sharp, because a human hand set it out, not nature.