Dick Friedman said:
I resaw redwood fence boards. I leave the tie the width of the same as the fenceboard, and let the ballast hold the switch in place. I also run a pair of stringers beneath all the ties, glued and nailed with #23 gauge pins.Rich Niemeyer: All of our chicken grit has oyster shells in it. Nothing is to scale.
I just found found some new ballast materials that I think will work well. Last Fall I purchased several tube bags of sand for weight in my pickup for the impending winter. So far, we’ve really had no winter thanks to La Nina. Anyway, I removed one of the tubes and opened it to use the sand for another use and was surprised to find the sand was EXTREMELY coarse, probably because the baggers were using sand that wasn’t suitable for regular masonry or cement work. Anyway, the stuff is so coarse, it will make perfect ballast as it looks right, and doesn’t appear it will move much. I put some on a track section the other day and will wait and see how it does for the next month or so. If it works, I’ll go get more before my hardware supply runs out of that run. Better than chicken grit I think and a little larger in scale. I’ll see…