On the KC West Bottoms project I've started at the freight house under 12th Street. The main line running up Santa Fe Street is code 83 on N scale cork roadbed for slight elevation. I have a team track and two spurs into the freight house on code 70 dropping off the roadbed onto shelving cork they sell at Bed Bath and Beyond. Does anyone have a guess how to ballast the main line which was really a secondary lightly used line and the spurs, i.e. rock, cinders, dirt, etc?|-| John
The Joplin area lead/zinc ore occured in a silica flint rock matrix. After mining, mostly in small underground mines the ore was crushed and the heavy ore washed from the crushed rocks. Most waste chat was screened with the coarser sizes sold for railroad ballast with the remainder going into waste piles some of which were rescreened as the coarser sizes became scarce. Joplin chat was the preferred aggregate for asphalt and its low fob price allowed it to be shipped up to 300 miles and be competitive with locally crushed aggregates. Chat was cheap as it was the bi-product of mining from the late 1800's until the 1960's. The joplin area included over 800 mines up to 200 of which were in operation at one time. Dave H
And all that fine chat from the mines contained lead and contaminated many areas around Joplin and Pittsburg. Picher, OK has become a super fund site and is abandoned. Just don't use the actual product on your model railroad. Kent in KC
As in the thread by me, I decided on a mixture of mostly light gray with some buff and cinderes mixed in.
