Ballasting is usually a long chore and can be a messy business.By using this ballast spreader, you are saving a lot of time that can be used elsewhere.How to use:- Lay the spreader on the track- Fill the spreader with ballast- Slide the ballast spreader along the track- Done: you now have evenly placed ballast on both sides of the track as well as between the rails. No cleaning required.This is the N gauge version of the spreader. Delailed informations: Ballasted track is much more realistic than track that is merely fixed to the baseboard of your model railway layout. However, the task of ballasting the track is one that generally causes trepidation into the hearts of most railway modellers. This is because the task is seen as a tedious, messy and never-ending process. First, you have to put down the ballast and then you have to fix the ballast in place (very important to prevent it from getting into locomotive mechanism and point blades). Well, thanks to this clever device from Proses, laying the ballast can be a much more pleasant task. The device is a rectangular container with a hopper-like interior that has three exit holes at the bottom, and also on the bottom edges are two cutouts. The holes and cutouts are spaced to align with your N gauge track. Using the device is simplicity itself. Place the unit on your straight or curved track so that the rails are in the cutouts, fill with your preferred blend of ballast, and slide the device along the track. You will be left with a neat strip of ballast on each outside edge of the track, ballast in between the rails, and NONE on the rail heads. Thus, there is very minimum cleaning necessary before the ballast is fixed in place. Just ensure that when sliding the device along the track, it does not run out of ballast in the hopper. It works on straight and curved track, so unless you have pointwork that resembles the station throat at Newcastle, the majority of your track can be very quickly ballasted. This is even truer if you also use the Proses PROBS-FIX-03 Ballast Fixer to apply glue to the ballast. Sounds too good to be true? Then have a look at this video: