First Static Grass on Nystrup Gravel

Finally I managed to get on with landscaping and the process of covering the little Nystrup Gravel layout with surface features and static grass. It's the same old story - too busy with work, family and the vintage railway. Fortunately the short modelling sessions of 10-15 minutes do add up over time.

It's spring. The first grass is appearing on Nystrup Gravel.

Back in January I began adding ground cover in the form of (relatively) finely sieved gravel and used ground coffee. As the coffee was much too dark in colour, I flowed a diluted mix of lighter earth colours over the coffee areas to lighten up the colour but still making it darker than the gravel areas. I finished with some air brushed colour (Vallejo 71.142 IDF Sinai Grey) before I added more branches, old grass and leaves where they would be most likely to end up. Probably way too much effort for an area to be covered with grass... 

Before the first grass could be applied I added the last stabilizing planks to the loading ramp. With a little spot painting here and there and adding a little weathering the ramp allowed the grassing to proceed.

Zooming out a bit the different materials used for the ground cover are visible.

I unpacked the black suitcase with my static grass applicator and filled two of the small containers with 4 mm RTS-flock 70204 and 12 mm RTS 70212-2 of the same green colour called 'Summer'.

A small test area behind the loading ramp was covered with glue from the same RTS-brand as the applicator. With the glue applied I began the grass application by covering the area with a thin covering of the 4 mm grass and then going over the area with the long grass until I had a sufficient covering. The slow drying glue allows plenty of time to add more grass fibres if needed.

A small shrubbery has found a place to grow under the loading ramp. A patch of green grass has begun to grow here as well.

One layer of 12 mm static grass in a single colour behind the loading ramp. Under the ramp the grass will be thinner and less green due to shadows, less rain and harsher ground conditions.

I'm very satisfied with the result of my little experiment and will now carry on with getting grass planted under the ramp to allow the last track on the layout to be built. I will add different lengths and colours of grass according to how ground, sun light, lost gravel from unloading skips and other factors influence growth. 

The outdoor modelling season is back. Nice and sunny spring weather combines well with modelling.