The Green, Green Grass....

I have finally started to add some colour and texture to the landscape of my 009 project. At this stage the process is very much the same as I would do in 7mm scale so I thought I would share some images here. When I first started the project I always had it in mind to start on the cutting side, so it was about time that I made a start...

Progress has been made using the following methods and materials:

• Ground mix around the edges of the track made from Woodlands Scenics fine turf, a little (very) fine sand and dried tea leaves. This is laid over a PVA bed and then has matt medium dropped on the top to secure material in places such as where it lays over the ballast and darken the mix nicely.
• Other ground areas get the Woodlands Scenics fine turf over PVA as a base for the grass.
• Grass starts with hanging basket liner. I had a few bad patches on the first attempt at this and I nearly threw in the towel in favour of ground foam. I persisted and got better results once back in the swing of it.
• In places where the hanging basket liner left bald patches I used pieces of Green Scene 'meadow grass' teased out and stuck down with PVA. This gives nice variety in texture and colour.

As an experiment I used some material from Javis (I think this is it) which is gummed and just needs wetting. to be honest it looked awful at first but with hanging basket and Green Scene materials around it it blends in quite well. There isn't really any visible in the picture above but a patch is just visible in the one below.

I've annotated the next couple of pictures to illustrate the variety of materials used. Here the light green oval is the Green Scene 'meadow grass', the dark green is a similar material in a lighter shade:

Here the Javis material can just be spotted as a yellow patch in the grass:

Having got to the next area of land I concluded that it needed to be more than just a patch of grass and that ideally I wanted something growing there. The hunt was on for a tree or two and whilst I have supplies of sea foam ('Forest in a box') I wanted something a bit more substantial in this location. A visit to a local model shop found a pack of two Hornby Skale Scenics 'eco' trees that with a little extra work will do the job quite well:

Ironically using these trees sits nicely in my aim to be able to use materials on this project that are available to 4mm scale modellers that I might miss out on working in 7mm scale. At least that is what I tell myself...

Colin