Ballasting model railway track

Its been a while but I've managed to make some progress on the railway track! I've ballasted the track. I spent some time researching the various methods people have used, there's a wealth of information on the internet, in the end this is how I did it:

Materials:
PVA glue
Sharp sand
Water
Large syringe
Teaspoon!

Step 1:
Poured the sand into position and brushed it into place, the sand was quite moist out of the bag so easy to form into place.

 

Step 2:
By the time all of the sand was in place it had dried out, I wanted it wet to help the glue soak though all of the grains so I gave it a good soaking with a fine mist, taking care not to blow it out of position!

 

Step 3:
Glued it in place. I used PVA glue watered down to a consistency of milk. I started by using a large syringe to drop the glue onto the wet sand but this was taking AGES so I used a teaspoon to carefully pour the glue into the centre of the track, whilst this was soaking in I used the syringe to add glue to the edges of the ballast

Step 4:
Let it dry, I left mine for days because I was busy doing other stuff but I think it was good and solid after 24hrs. A quick sweep to get rid of loose stuff and job done!

Thoughts

This was a very cheap method, I allready had sand and glue so to me it was free! If not you can pick up a bag of sharp sand for a few quid from a builders merchant and this will be enough to last you a lifetime!

I quite like the irregularity of grain size but purists out there may wish to sieve the sand first as there are some larger stones in the mix, I found though that most of the larger stones didn't bond as well as the sand and hence got swept away at the end.

Next step is to weather the tracks, my plan for this is to spray the lot (track and ballast) and maybe wash and highlight depending on how it ends up looking.