How to ballast straight Lego train track

I love the look of ballast and sleepers on Lego train track, it really adds an extra level of detail to any train display. It is however very plate and tile intensive, so it needs to be approached with a budget in mind.

I make my straight section across two green 32x32 baseplates. The track is designed to sit 4 studs from the side of each plate.

I use either Light Grey, Light Bley, Dark grey and Dark Bley to add to the affect.
Step 1: Lay about the plates on your baseplates matching the format exactly as below.The Dark Grey?Bley plates MUST be this colour at the places as shown. The other 1x wide plate can be any colour you like.



Step 2:
Lay down the 2x wide Light Grey/Bley that run the length of the track. the 4x wide plate down the middle can be any colour you want.



Step 3: Place the train track down onto the plates. push it down firmly. I only use the old 9v track because it looks the best.

  

Step 4: Place Light Grey/Bley 2x4 plate in between the track as in the picture below.



Step 5:  The next step is to place 1x2 Light Grey/Bley plate along the edges of track to fil in the spaces. Then add the 1x4 Reddish Brown tile spaced 1 tile apart. Also add 1x1 round and square plate to look like loose stone.



Step 6:  The final step is to add the 1x1 Reddish Brown tile to finish off the sleepers off.

How to ballast curved Lego train track

I love the look of ballast and sleepers on Lego train track, it really adds an extra level of detail to any train display. It is however very plate and tile intensive, so it needs to be approached with a budget in mind.
I use either Light Grey, Light Bley, Dark grey and Dark Bley to add to the affect.

Here is how I start out with a curved 2 piece section.

Step 1:Using a mix of eight of the 2x10 Light Grey/Bley and one of the 1x10 Grey/Bley plate, I apply them to the bottom of the track.


Step 2: Add the remaining seven 1x10 Light Grey/Bley plates.



Step 3: Next is the eight 1x4 Light Grey/Bley plates that get held in place with the seven 2x4 and one 2x3  Dark Grey/Bley  plates across the top. Then apply the one 2x4  Dark Grey/Bley  plate , seven 2x3  Dark Grey/Bley  plates and two 1x3  Dark Grey/Bley  plates to the top and bottom right of the section.



Step 4: Now, it's time to turn the plate over and apply some more Light Grey/Bley plate as below. Eight 1x1 Light Grey/Bley plates along the bottom, eight 1x4 Light Grey/Bley plates in the middle section and eight 1x2 Light Grey/Bley plates across the top.
The reason we do this is so that we can apply the sleeper tiles.



Step 5: Now apply the sleepers (sometimes called ties) as shown below which consists of sixteen 1x4 Reddish Brown tiles and thirty two 1x1 Reddish Brown tiles.



Step 6: Additional 1x1 square and round plate can be added to show loose stones if required.

How I cover my sidewalks on Lego road plates

Lego road plates look good in any lego city, but are fairly bland if they are just put down as is without any proper paved sidewalks added to them.
I started out by covering them in light bley 2x2 tiles, but this became time consuming and the minifigs on them would fall over. I then started adding in light bley 2x2 tile with stud in middle so that I could stand up the minifigs on them.
The next step was to use light bley 6x6 tiles to more quickly and easily cover the tiles, but they would pop off all the time and were hard to find in quantity.
I finally decided to use a combination of plate and tile of various colours, because most sidewalks and footpaths have a variety of colours in the real world, and so should the Lego ones.
Here are some photo's of the finished plates

Straight plates using tiles and plates. I can place minfigs, bins, streetlamps etc at various places to give it a more realistic look. There is a 1 stud gap down each side so that the road plates can be joined with others plates.
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Curve plates are built using more of the 6x6 tiles.