Garden Railway Forum

Peter Butler wrote: ↑Sun Apr 14, 2019 6:22 pm Personal experience of using SBR and a variety of ballast materials has given me an insight into what works and what is less likely to.
My own first attempt was to use horticultural grit, which I took a long time to sieve out the larger lumps and only use the smaller. I quite liked the appearance of the grit but it failed in service after a couple of seasons.
My next (and now favoured) attempt was to use a fine, crushed, building material which is probably more to scale than the above. It is only about 1 mm. to dust and looks far better in my opinion.....
I also use crushed oyster shell, available from pet shops as bird feeder, which gives a different ground cover texture.
Both of these materials are stuck down with NEAT SBR and protected against rain for a few days.
The important thing is to know your materials and my experience has taught me this.....
SBR works well on fine grained, rough surface, crushed stone and oyster shell..... it does NOT work on large or smooth surface stone eg. aquarium grit etc. Initially it appears to hold but the large or smooth surfaces will not bind together as the SBR needs to
be able to form a skin around them.
After a while weather conditions of wind and rain will eventually remove the skin and the grit will become loose. I know this because it happened to me.
As for the surface sheen, it will disappear after a while and become matt, this is also part of the natural elements removing the 'skin' of the SBR but will leave enough to bind the smaller grit, particularly the coarser grained.
Yesterday I spent some time filling a few gaps in my own ballast, some of which has now been in place for about 5 years. Most is still very firmly attached and shows no signs of giving up yet.
I noticed that where my ballast is bonded to a layer of roofing felt it is very firmly stuck, however, where it is directly onto timber it is more likely to fail due to expansion/contraction of the timber which destroys the bond.
One other alarming feature of SBR is the way it turns blue when wet.... don't worry about this as it will also disappear given time.
I sincerely hopes this helps and avoids further failures now my experiments are recorded.

IanC wrote: ↑Tue Apr 16, 2019 3:14 pm

Peter Butler wrote: ↑Sun Apr 14, 2019 6:22 pm Personal experience of using SBR and a variety of ballast materials has given me an insight into what works and what is less likely to.
My own first attempt was to use horticultural grit, which I took a long time to sieve out the larger lumps and only use the smaller. I quite liked the appearance of the grit but it failed in service after a couple of seasons.
My next (and now favoured) attempt was to use a fine, crushed, building material which is probably more to scale than the above. It is only about 1 mm. to dust and looks far better in my opinion.....
I also use crushed oyster shell, available from pet shops as bird feeder, which gives a different ground cover texture.
Both of these materials are stuck down with NEAT SBR and protected against rain for a few days.
The important thing is to know your materials and my experience has taught me this.....
SBR works well on fine grained, rough surface, crushed stone and oyster shell..... it does NOT work on large or smooth surface stone eg. aquarium grit etc. Initially it appears to hold but the large or smooth surfaces will not bind together as the SBR needs to
be able to form a skin around them.
After a while weather conditions of wind and rain will eventually remove the skin and the grit will become loose. I know this because it happened to me.
As for the surface sheen, it will disappear after a while and become matt, this is also part of the natural elements removing the 'skin' of the SBR but will leave enough to bind the smaller grit, particularly the coarser grained.
Yesterday I spent some time filling a few gaps in my own ballast, some of which has now been in place for about 5 years. Most is still very firmly attached and shows no signs of giving up yet.
I noticed that where my ballast is bonded to a layer of roofing felt it is very firmly stuck, however, where it is directly onto timber it is more likely to fail due to expansion/contraction of the timber which destroys the bond.
One other alarming feature of SBR is the way it turns blue when wet.... don't worry about this as it will also disappear given time.
I sincerely hopes this helps and avoids further failures now my experiments are recorded.

Well Peter, it seems like you are the one to goto for advice on the use of SBR. You have been most helpful with all you do regarding Garden Railways. Unlike some , you do things that work........

pandsrowe wrote: ↑Mon Apr 22, 2019 4:45 pm I've been applying the SBR with a kitchen baster which I find gives a reasonable amount of control over where and how much is applied, but I'm wondering which methods others on here have tried and how effective they are.

FWLR wrote: ↑Mon May 06, 2019 7:58 am Listen to Peter Butler's advice...You can't really go wrong with it.....

Peter Butler wrote: ↑Mon May 06, 2019 10:44 am

FWLR wrote: ↑Mon May 06, 2019 7:58 am Listen to Peter Butler's advice...You can't really go wrong with it.....

Cheers Rod..... (there's a cheque in the post!)

philipy wrote: ↑Wed Apr 24, 2019 6:38 pm

pandsrowe wrote: ↑Mon Apr 22, 2019 4:45 pm I've been applying the SBR with a kitchen baster

Your idea of the baster sounds good and I've got some ballasting to do in the near future so I'll give that a try, I think.