This past weekend I had tje chance to visit the home of a model railroader not far away. Steve Waldvogel models the Milwaukee Road in HO scale, and (sadly) he has to dismantle the layout pending his taking a new job elsewhere. The layout, the Madison & Southern, is a well-scenicked railroad. The track is ME code 70 flex, and on one of the branchlines he modeled the track as being weedgrown. In N scale I've done the same using WS ground foam, but Steve had an ingenious trick, as I'll show in the following pictures. Using a grass mat made by Busch, along with a piece of flex track and some white glue, he cut a piece of the mat just a little wider and the same length as the track, applied glue to the bottom of the ties, and placed the track on the piece of grass mat. After painting & weathering the track, he had something like this: I asked him what he did if the "weeds" were too high or interfered with the flanges- he replied that he used a sideburn trimmer. I would imagine you could sprinkle a little ballast in the grass mat before applying the track for added effect. Also, IIRC Busch has other colors of grass mat, which means you could have dead weeds in the track. Just the thing to model track that suffers from deferred maintenance, spilled seed, or both.
That is awesome! I've thought about using static grass and dabbing it on by hand, but I'd be afraid of random strands getting caught up in the mech of some locos. I assume this grass mat doesn't release individual strands very easily which would help prevent that, would you agree?
I like that idea and I think I'll try it. I think it would look better if some spots were left 'weed free' and had only dirts and some ballast rock.....just in patches. In pictures I've seen that's always the way it appears. Candy
For just having patches of weeds here & there, I suppose you could cut a small piece of grass mat and just glue that piece to the underside of the track. I asked Steve about the possibility of fibers coming loose and he told me he hadn't seen any evidence of that happening, based on his own observation. I'm guessing you could do the same in N scale, but you would have to trim the fibers down a bit.
I think it looks a bit too heavy and uniform. Try putting down some wet water and then dabs of diluted Elmer's and then randomly sprinkle on some WS fine ground cover. Let dry and vacuum up. It will be more random, not cover all of the ballast and look more realistic.
The one picture I took of the main & siding does make the grass look pretty uniform, but if one looks around, there ARE prototype scenes like this, especially on little-used tracks. On some of the other area on this particluar layout, the weed effect is not so heavy. I'll try to find a better pic of what I'm talking about to show you. Ken- as time allows, I'll post some pics I took during this session on here. Since it IS a MILW layout, something tells me you'll like it.
Here is a link to the website for this model railroad, which sadly is becoming a memory as I type this. I also have pics I took in this album in Railimages. ABout the first three pages are dedicated to the M&S. I also have videos as well, but have not posted them to Youtube yet.
The grass mat is made by Busch, which IIRC is a German firm (I could be wrong, but based on some of the language on tha package, it looked decidedly German). I imagine Walthers should have the stuff. And as Fotheringill suggested, perhaps adding some ground foam to the top of the mat segment would add a little texture. Hadn't thought of that angle before.......but then again, until last week I never saw this novel way to model less-than-pristine track.
