Model Railroad Club Meeting Derailed by 47-Minute Argument Over Correct Way to Ballast Track

The monthly meeting of the Elm Street Model Railroad Club was consumed for the ninth consecutive session by an unresolved argument over the correct method of ballasting track on the club's communal HO scale layout, with no train having been run since February. 'The prototype uses crushed granite,' insisted ballast purist Edgar Roadbed, producing a ziplock bag of material he had personally collected from a nearby railroad right-of-way. 'This is what real ballast looks like. It's gray. It's angular. It's 1.5 millimeters in HO scale. Everything else is a compromise with reality.' 'Nobody is arguing about the stone type,' said opposing member Frances Gauge. 'We're arguing about the glue. You want to use diluted white glue applied with an eyedropper. That takes seventeen hours per foot of track. We have 200 feet of track. That's 3,400 hours of ballasting. We'll be dead before the layout is finished.' Roadbed dismissed the time concern. 'Quality cannot be rushed. The Pennsylvania Railroad did not rush its ballast, and neither will I.' The club's sixteen members have divided into three camps: the 'Prototype Purists' who demand exact replication of real railroad ballasting; the 'Good Enough Group' who advocate for pre-made ballast sheets; and a single member, Howard Spur, who has suggested they 'just paint the cork gray and move on with their lives.' Spur's proposal was described by the Prototype Purists as 'an insult to the hobby.' Club president Dorothy Mainline has proposed a vote to settle the matter, but the factions cannot agree on the voting procedure. The Prototype Purists want a two-thirds supermajority. The Good Enough Group wants a simple majority. Howard Spur has stopped attending meetings. The layout, which was begun in 2019, currently consists of 200 feet of unballasted track, three unpainted buildings, and a single locomotive that has not moved in eleven months.