Difficult installation of a vinyl grass mat

A few months back I wrote an article about my second N-scale layout which I use as a base for my DCC experiments. This layout by definition was supposed to be just a test track, and therefore I was not planning to do any landscaping work there. However, with time I got tired of the rough look and that's when I created my very first backdrop. Unfortunately this improvement did nothing to the fact that the base of the layout was still just a piece of wood that did not look nice at all.

This is what it looked it like. An OSB-3 base with just some elevated road bed. What it needed next was at least some nice grass-looking surface.

I did use several different techniques to create grass before. And the one that had definitely the best effect/effort ratio involved gluing a pre-fabricated grass mat to the layout surface. That's what I decided to do now, too.

The mats I used before were all paper based with grass flocks of different lengths. They were great for permanent layouts where the track was attached to the surface, and the green elements were placed only between the tracks.

But here I had a test track on a non-permanent layout. And I did not want the rail track to be attached, I wanted to have it freely lying on the grass surface. A mat with flocks was not very good for that purpose. I needed something more flat.

That's when I found out about vinyl mats. Those are not very popular where I live and it was actually pretty difficult to buy one. But once it arrived, I immediately realized that it was exactly what I needed.

The mat I'm describing is a product from Woodland Scenics which is a very popular manufacturer in the US but not so much in Europe.

Since I knew nothing about vinyl mats, I had to gather some knowledge about how to apply it. I've learnt that a spray adhesive would be a proper solution in this case. Here's the one I was able to buy at a local store.

I wanted to get as flat surface as possible. But my layout already had some elevated elements and was simply not flat at all. I had two choices to go about it.

• I could have either glued the mat step by step working around the elevated parts and cutting holes as I proceeded
• Or I could have removed the elevated elements and applied the mat in one step

I've concluded that the latter was too much effort. That it would be very difficult to clean the base and make it really flat again. So I decided to go for the former idea. That might have been a huge mistake...

I've started working from one corner. I've assumed that both my layout and the mat were perfect rectangles and I just glued it at one end. Once it dried a little I started cutting the holes for the elevated areas.

This has been surprisingly easy and I was not noticing any real issues. That was the case right up until the end, when I realized that not everything I did in the process was perfect.

Problem #1 - as I was shaping the mat to accommodate the existing road bed, I was also changing its shape. The vinyl base is similar to rubber and what started as a perfect rectangle in the beginning was not one in the end. This made my final gluing step very difficult.

Problem #2 - I've noticed that in some areas the mat did not attach itself very well. There were clearly bubbles of air under it. If the mat was one continuous piece, I could just pick it up, add glue and fix it. But it wasn't and I could not risk tearing it by pulling it up. More on this issue later.

In the end I've managed to glue the entire mat and it looks pretty good from a distance.

And it looks even better with the backdrop mentioned before.

And for the most part it looks fantastic even up close.

But not everywhere. Here's one of the parts where the glue was either not applied properly or simply did not act very well.

That part is very difficult to fix. The gap is not only at the very edge but reaches far into the field. This means there's an empty space under the area where the rail track will go.

I had to do something about it. The only option I could see was cutting the mat and spraying some glue under it. This did not go well on the first try resulting in the following problem.

I've managed to fix it and it's better now. But unfortunately my actions revealed another issue which I did not predict.

A vinyl grass mat seems very sturdy but it's only an impression. It can get damaged easily either by:

• bending it
• pressing it a lot
• pressing it a little when your hand is dirty with glue

In all those cases the result is the same. The grass layer comes off and reveals the vinyl base.

The paper mats with grass flocks also get damaged when working with them but the negative effects are not that much visible. It would seem that one should be very careful with vinyl mats, even though they feel indestructible at first touch.

Summary

I can't say I'm happy with the results of my work. I'll keep it for now because it's not THAT bad but I expected the entire operation to be much simpler.

And all this does not really mean that I feel the product from Woodland Scenics is a bad one. On the contrary - I do believe it's a very good product. It's just that it should be applied on flat surfaces. And I complicated the entire process by attempting to install it with minimum effort in a rather difficult setting.

***

An extra note about the glue. I thought I could use a spray adhesive safely inside my apartment. That was a wrong assumption. This kind of glue:

• requires good ventilation, as it does not "smell" very healthy
• and - most importantly - it diffuses in all directions, meaning it will not only land on the target surface but also everywhere around it

Other than that, the so called "spray adhesive" seems to be a good solution for attaching vinyl to wood.

[Update] Please be sure to read my final notes here.