Ground Covers

[guilfordrr]

Well, going to get to work on my second layout. The "grass" on my previous pike was just the plywood surface painted green. As far as ground covers go, should I go for indoor/outdoor carpet, fake grass, ground foam, the afore-mentioned "the-heck-just-paint-it-green" method, or something else entirely?

[Heartman]

My layout has been under construction for a year & a half and probably will be for another 2 to 3 years ( 15 ft. X 24 ft. "L" shape with a second level). I first painted everything green, and as I build over it with track, ballest, roads, buildings, ground foam, tunnels, etc., the green gets covered, but it has the grass look 'till something happens in that area. A gallon of paint was cheap fast grass.
I lived in N.H. 30 years ago and still miss it. Now I just Pa. it.
Dennis

[Anonymous]

I saw some saw dust painted green it looked like grass, but I guess it is easier, faster and cheaper to just paint it green like Dennis said.
Good Luck
Angelo

[spankybird]

Tom

We will give you are two cents on how we did our, you can decide if it will work for you.

Mine is like yours, built on plywood. I first layout where my road will be.

You can see in this pic my pencil lines.

Then I paint the grass area green and while the paint is wet and the sawdust green grass to it.



I then paint my roads flat black and add striping


After the paint is dry, I do spray with thinned white glue to keep the grass in place.

tom

[cnw1995]

I've used the 4 x 8 green grass matts put out by LifeLike. It's essentially a large green sheet of sandpaper - but it looks very toy-trainey - and it was easy to put down on a 4 x 8 foam board. The price was right too. I researched fake fur, all sorts of fabrics, and paints - to cover 4 4x8 boards was about $30