Natural ground cover materials


N

nsconductor

Member
How many of you use natural materials for ground cover? I'm wanting to go out tomorrow and try to gather some stuff to sift and use. I plan to run a magnet through whatever I get. Question is.....where do you guys usually go? Creek beds, normal soil, etc.?
 
I get dirt out of my yard, but, the topsoil is mostly sand, so, I have to dig down about 2ft. to the morrow or brown dirt. I also use sawdust & playsand that I buy at Joann's fabrics in the silk flowers isle. Playsand comes in diff. colors. You can also get Playsand in the summer months at WM, but it only is sold in white. Joann's sells it in about 5 diff. colors & on my layout I mix the colors & use it for track ballast. I also use crushed brick pavers that I buy at my local Brick paver plant. It comes ina multi grade & I seperate it by the smallest w/a screen. If you go onto my Blog you will see a lot of the items that I use.
 
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Here in central Alabama we have lots of red dirt and clay (from the iorn content) I usually find several 'clods' on a bank crumble them up and sift it thru a screen, mix it with 50/50 white glue and water and 'paint' it on. Dead blooms off of wild Hydrangea make excellent trees: pluck off and remaining flowers, coat the small branches with the glue and roll them in ground foam, I would also follow up with a spray of Aquanet hair spray. Bath powder makes good marble (limestone) dust if you have a quarry on your layout.
Dead Goldenrod blooms make excellent Georgia pine trees...we have had a couple of good frosts already so when the flowers are gone and just the 'fluf' of the seed pods are left, I'll pick them and give them a shot of dark green from a rattle can.
I have used lichens to simulate a thick forest canopy, you can coat them with ground foam, and you can seperate them into sprigs to make scrub brush and weeds.
David
 
I use local ocean beach sand for my ballast. It is the colour and size I like. Also, I sift dry garden soil (it is very sandy and low in tilth) through pantyhose, mix with plaster of Paris, and spread it over my rail yard surface. I rolled it to compaction using a baby food jar on its side, and using my finger tips or other flat implement between the ties and rails. Then I oversprayed it with a light wood glue water mixture with a bit of dish detergent for surfactant effect.

Note that I left small puddle dents here and there, painted their bottoms black, and then filled them with finish grade epoxy to simulate oily puddles.

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Good info guys. I like the oily puddles Selector. Railyards are dirty places. I don't really have an actual yard on my layout, but will have a place where engines are left sitting. We have the red clay around here too, and sand about 40 miles from here. Got a few shovel fulls this evening........need a better sifting method. I'm using a wire mesh kitchen strainer......kind of hard to sift dirt out of that clay.
 
Bake it in the oven, or if the Missus objects to that, put it on some foil and put it on the grill for a while. Then,bust it up with a hammer. I have used a kitchen strainer before...my Wife threw it out so now I use a piece of screen off of an old screen door a buddy had. I also use real coal for the tenders of my steamers and pulverize and sift it the same way. I can get plenty of it since I work at a coal-fired generating plant.:rolleyes:
 
Bake it at what temp for how long? I plan to get alot more of it. As for coal, I have unlimited access to that myself do to running coal trains andpiles of it laying around the yards. I've also used aggregate used it making shingles as coal also. It's the right size and color without sifting.


I will have some areas with trees......I want the forrest floor to be dead leaves and underbrush. I saw where people grind up leaves. I ripped open some tea bags (unused) and they look the perfect size, color, and texture for forrest floor.
 
Hey! The tea bags is something I haven't thought of...Thanks!
As far as baking the clay? I would try to roll it out as thin as I could on some aluminum foil and put it on a cookie sheet...the thinner it is the shorter the baking time. Start out around 200 to 250 and check on it every hour or so...break off a little piece around the edge and check it to see if its completely dry.
A word of caution!!!!! If things start to smell funny, you might want to abort.... I made some coal loads for a dozen accurail 55 ton hoppers using real coal that I had pulverized and mixed it with white glue and applied it to cardboard inserts for the hoppers. Things were going well untill I decided to give the oven a little extra boost. Soon, the whole house was smelling like a combination of creosote and burnt motor oil!
My lovely wife, while a saint and MOST tolerant of my escapades involving our beloved hobby, was not amused....clearly, I had crossed the line!!!:D
 
Selector, Thats fine work you do there, Hoss! Maybe one day when I'm tired of painting brass locomotives I'll get my layout looking half that good. It would certainly please my wife. I put down inch and a half foam over plywood and ran some flex track just so I could run trains with the kids....thats as far as I got!
 
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