Narrow Gauge and Short Line Gazette logo Sep/Oct 2021
Volume 47, No. 4

Feature

Layout Refinements

Grow Some Tall Weeds!

By Dr. Gregg Condon, MMR / Photos by the author

Part of the fun of visiting model railroads is to learn about new products and innovative techniques. On a visit to Scott McLeod’s HOn3 RGS layout, I saw a product line that was new to me: Martin Welberg Scenic Studios (they have a website) and the product line is also available from Scenic Express. The Welberg products consist of flexible mats planted full of grasses and weeds of various sizes with some clusters being as much as six feet tall in HO. This is fine for patches of very large wild grasses or thickets of shrubs. Obviously, the product would be appropriate for scales larger than HO.

I ordered three of the Welberg scenic mats in three color choices. When I received the weed mats, I cut out portions of the mats to use in various places, and I used them in conjunction with smaller Silflor weed patches at the edges.

This area near the Placerville warehouse was first finished with low vegetation, similar to everywhere else on the author’s layout.

Installation

The new Martin Welberg weed patches, along with Silflor weed clusters, were added to scenery that had already been declared finished. I did not remove the existing ground cover that consisted of real dirt and finer textures of commercial colored ground foam. If there had been large foam clumps, I would have removed them.

I applied beads of Elmer’s White Glue to the existing ground cover and worked it in evenly with a finger. Then I applied more White Glue to the flexible plastic bottom of the new Martin Welberg patches and pressed them into place. Smaller Silflor patches were added around the edges, and Woodland Scenics ground foam was added around the edges of that. T-pins were inserted to make the new weed patches hunker down till the glue dried overnight. The smaller weeds on the edges were sprayed with a fine mist of water. Then a mix of 50/50 White Glue and water (with detergent added as a wetting agent) was applied with my dedicated scenery glue applicator which the manufacturer intended as a ketchup dispenser.

The eight photos shown here and the following three pages present four pairs of before-and-after views of areas where the new taller weed patches have been added. Refinements to a finished layout can go on forever!

The same location shown in the title photo has been given a visual change-of-pace with taller weeds.
This area next to the Placerville depot was declared “finished,” until the author studied prototype photos from 1947 and saw tall weeds in this location.
The new Placerville weed patch looks more like the prototype in the author’s target year.
Here is a portion of a 16-foot stretch of mountainside that originally had a sameness to it all.
With the addition of the tall weed patches, a minor focal point has been created in this long scene. A family of elk has been added, further enhancing this new point of interest.
The area bracketed by the truck ramp and the wooden freight platform is the focal point of the Coke Ovens scene.
Tall weeds have now been planted in this area to give it “visual punctuation” as the town’s center of interest.

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