I had a productive and enjoyable time building the Bar Mills coal company kit, which amounts to a small diorama. Does anyone have a method for doing the ground cover of a project like this, apart from what I can find in Bar Mills's excellent instructions and similar sources? I plan to paint the foamcore base my standard earth color, then glue ground cover (Highball's real dirt, mostly) and add in a gravel drive lane of N scale ballast and of course coal and/or cinders throughout. If you have suggestions about how to do this more realistically or efficiently, I welcome suggestions. Thanks.
other than add some weeds,brush, and trees, sounds like you got it covered..
I don't have a lot of flat terrain in my part of the country, or on my layout. Even in a small scene, I cut small pieces of foam and glue it on the base to change the elevation, and then use plaster cloth to smooth out the transitions.
Uncle Butch is right. You can't keep green stuff from growing, so why not just model it? I've got a collection of ground foam and turf in lots of colors. Mix it up, just like nature does. Consider static grass now that the price of the applicators has come down, too. A small stream or even just a ditch with a bit of Envirotex for water will give you an excuse to model a bridge or culvert, too.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.