HO Modeltrain Ballast system for Wacuum

thingiverse

Complete ballast system for those who struggle to achieve neat and consistent ballast on their HO scale model railroad. I confess that I am completely clueless when it comes to achieving neat and uniform ballast. After watching a video on YouTube of someone from England who had made a "vacuum" for the purpose, I thought to myself, "I can do that too!" So, I started by making a ballast spreader that was wide enough to cover the edges of my Peco flex tracks, which were mounted on Woodland Scenics track bed. I went back and forth with the spreader until it was evenly covered, but my challenge was to make it look neat and tidy with a brush and various tools - I just never succeeded... Therefore, I designed this "head" to suction up the excess ballast, with a separator that fits onto the common threads of half-liter bottles and the like. Finally, I made an adapter that fits over my vacuum cleaner, where I can adjust the flow low enough to suit my needs. I believe that the results speak for themselves. I run the spreader back and forth once, turn on the vacuum, run the suction head over it ONCE... and it looks like this, with no touching up required afterwards... The above is designed to fit with a 10 mm hose (inner diameter).