Cheating?

Since I've been pottering round working on the station platform I also though that it was time to do something about the hill behind the station. I had purchased a Grass mat by Busch (though I see every man and his dog seem to make them) at Railex for this purpose, and at $37 for a mat 80cm by 80cm it seems like a good idea. Essentially it is static grass stuck to a crepe paper base.

So, after a bit of land form sculpting (which will not satisfy all readers of this blog)....

 It was time to have a go so i cut out as first piece and glued it down with the good old PVA.

First thoughts are that its easy to work with. it looks OK, but I will still be doing a bit more colouring to lighten it up. The inside bits in the roll are a bit flat, and I'll leave this spread out from a couple of days to see if it improves.
The huge plus for me is that it has saved a vast amount of time, given that I would have to acquire a static grass dispenser, get the grass, then spend time learning how to do it all. Add to this the fact that I don't think static grass works visually (it just doesn't look right to me, especially when some seem to think its the bees knees).

I also added some offcuts from the mat to do some other areas at the Wellington end of the layout.

 These pieces will allow me to have a bit of a play with ballasting, plus I will have to do some work on the shaping of the main road.

However, I could not resist having a bit of a play

'The back one probably is broken down'

This reveals that I really need to add the cowcatchers to the Ed's, and that from close range code 55 rail still looks too big. Oh, and I need to do something about those cars (colour wise)