Module 1: Grass!

While Streckenende is drying, I pulled out Module 1 and continued working there. I have no grass fibers that look like dried long grass, so I went for the next best thing: burnt grass. Mixed with Scenic Express Late Summer and Noch Wildwiese fibers I arrived at a lighter grass tone and used that for the track embankment.

Between the tracks and the grass should be a bit flat exposed earth where almost nothing grows due to weed control spraying. I used some fine dark sand I collected years ago at the beach for that. This sand strip needs to be glued down before applying grass on the embankment. The other way around doesn't look particularly good, and needed a bit of effort to fix.

Next I applied a thin layer of real dirt from our garden to the flat area, soaked in Matte Medium and dapped with an old paint brush for more texture. While that is still wet, I applied a mix of Scenic Express 2mm Late Summer fibers, Noch Wildgrass 2.5mm, and some Noch medium green 5mm fibers. I'm planning to add some conifers on the dirt hill and applied some forest ground cover.

I repeated the procedure on the other side, and added a small service road that terminates near the tracks. I want the drainage ditch to be a bit darker with more body, but not substantially different from the surrounding meadow. For now I started out with Scenic Express Late Summer and a more generous helping of Noch medium green 5mm fibers. As a side effect it nicely pulls together the embankment and the meadow. The ditch on the left is not done yet.

Let's see what this looks like tomorrow when glue is all dried up.