I need a bit of help.

I'm making small sets to film a video. I use some small balasty rocks under my tomy tracks. But cleaning up takes forever. Does anyone have tips to help me clean up the ballast for when I want to/need to change the set?

A toolkit of small brushes, shovels, buckets, spatulas and squeegees.

-plarnold

I'm making small sets to film a video. I use some small balasty rocks under my tomy tracks. But cleaning up takes forever. Does anyone have tips to help me clean up the ballast for when I want to/need to change the set?

A few years ago, I knew some guys online who ran miniature war games based on their own rules set. They used large sheets of vinyl "pleather" that they would paint with roads and other 2D features. They could dump piles of homemade rubble all over the game table and when it was time to clean up, they would lift the pleather sheet up and use it like a funnel to dump the loose debris back into its storage container.

A toolkit of small brushes, shovels, buckets, spatulas and squeegees.

-plarnold

Thanks for the suggestion. It's a nice idea, but I assume that'd cost abit of money. Thanks though.

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A few years ago, I knew some guys online who ran miniature war games based on their own rules set. They used large sheets of vinyl "pleather" that they would paint with roads and other 2D features. They could dump piles of homemade rubble all over the game table and when it was time to clean up, they would lift the pleather sheet up and use it like a funnel to dump the loose debris back into its storage container.

Thanks for the suggestion. I'm actually doing this onto of a large grass mat, so it shouldn't be too hard to do that however, the grass mat is large and taped down, so it'd be hard to do it by that method. Thank you nonetheless.

Well I have never done this before but once you've taken all the scenery and track pieces off until it's only ballast I would use a vacuum cleaner with a small nozel to suck them all up, with a new bag of course and just dump out the bag into a container then do it all over again for each set

Thanks. I've thought I that. That's ideally what I'd like to do, however, I don't think mini vacuum cleaners are very cheap... I'll have to look into one..

I figured out my own method which works great. Turn a Tomy truck upside down, and press down while dragging it into the ballast, and it'll move the ballast almost perfectly, then scoop the ballast into an adjacent small cup or other tomy truck.

Thanks. I've thought I that. That's ideally what I'd like to do, however, I don't think mini vacuum cleaners are very cheap... I'll have to look into one..

Depending how big the ballast is you could use an ordinary vacuum cleaner extendable pipe with a sock over the end, the ballast gets sucked up and caught in the sock instead of making it inside the cleaner (to the bag) you can then reuse it the captured ballast

Depending how big the ballast is you could use an ordinary vacuum cleaner extendable pipe with a sock over the end, the ballast gets sucked up and caught in the sock instead of making it inside the cleaner (to the bag) you can then reuse it the captured ballast

Genius!

There is a plarail train that sucks small snow balls and split it out at the top. I suppose you can use a bag to contain the ballast as the train spliting the ballast out