Upgrading the Appearance of Bachmann E-Z Track

 When I made the decision to jump back into the model railroad hobby I was very interested in the various track and plastic roadbed products. The most common, and probably the most accessible, is the Bachmann EZ track system.  All of these types of track are pretty cool and seem to be a great place to start for new hobbyists.  As neat as they are they do have some drawbacks.

I have, over the last couple of months, purchased a pretty large collection of EZ track.  Most of it is the steel track with the black plastic roadbed.  Visually this stuff is pretty boring stuff. 

Plain black plastic track and roadbed is pretty boring and lacks much detail.

The roadbed does have a little texture but not much.

Looks a whole lot like a toy train which is really how it is marketed.

Sad

I spend many hours digging through YouTube videos looking for cool ideas on how to upgrade the appearance of the track. To be honest there is not really much useful information and much of what is there is how-to's on ballasting the track. Most of the ballasted EZ track I've seen is not really much of a visual upgrade.  But then I found John's Trains on YouTube.  He has a really nice HO layout but he was gifted a Bachmann starter set that includes EZ track.  We wanted to use the entire set but, like me, did not like to the look of the track.  He documented how he upgraded the track and the results are really great! I adapted his approach and here is the results I got.

This looks a lot better!  It actually looks like ballast.

Painted track and ties look very authentic.  I did some washes down the center of the track but you can't really see this in these pictures.

This looks more like a model and less like a toy but it still has its flexibility and portability.  It is still EZ track.

In my next post I will show you how I did this and the materials required.  I am also working on a post for EZ track turnouts, which are little more challenging to do.  Finally I will do a little diorama showing the final results and how this might look on a layout.  I hope this technique will make EZ track more of a viable basis for a 'serious' model railroad.