Atlantic's works: Portable layout - Scenic details next

[Atlantic 3279]

I went to Spalding exhibition today. I've gone every year for some years now, as it is by far the biggest exhibition within the Lincolnshire county boundary. Some excellent, high quality, steam-era, pre-nationalisation layouts have appeared there over the years, sometimes several at the same show. Squires attend too, with a reasonably extensive stock on offer, although other trade representation (as with many other shows) seems poorer than it once was.
Wickham Market, by Ely club, was nicely presented (albeit post-LNER) but there wasn't a rich selection of layouts to suit my specific tastes this year, although there were a couple of good ones among "the rest". I suppose the organisers can only invite what's available though. Perhaps more people need to build decent show layouts.
I was also trying to do some shopping, at the risk of having a heart attack in reaction to the latest shocking prices. One thing I wanted was some more static grass fibres not too dissimilar from the colour of those already on my Gaugemaster grass mat that forms the base layer for field and embankments on my new layout. Squires sell the Gaugemaster mats, and I was hoping to find some packs of Noch fibres on their stall, as I know that Noch make the mats for Gaugemaster, and a browse through the Noch catalogue at home had suggested to me that a couple of the colours in their range might be exactly what I wanted. No sign of any of the Noch range on the Squires stall though, nor anywhere else at the show. Squires had another maker's grass fibres, but I thought their colours looked either very weak, or very dull with rather cold shades of green, nothing like the rich colours on the grass mat. Elsewhere, on the Aspire stall, I noticed some Javis grass fibre packs, including one with a mixture that appeared to match, under the show lighting, quite nicely to a sample piece of mat I had with me, so I bought some.
Back at home, under different lighting, the Javis fibres didn't match nearly so well, looking a duller, colder green, a bit like some of those others I rejected at the show. Not wanting to buy Noch fibres "mail order", based only on an apparent colour match in a catalogue image, rather than seeing them for myself first, I might have been left in an awkward position. Luckily, my thrifty / penny-pinching / hording habits have resulted in me hanging on to all of my grass mat offcuts, so although it is a bit time consuming, a quick test has proved that it is possible to scrape the fibres from the offcuts to provide a plentiful supply for building up longer and less even grass in selected areas - without spending more money!

[Mercator II]

Hope you enjoyed the show, I was intending to go, but work got in the way Saturday and yesterday was a kids Cup Scout event in Mablethorpe

See you in couple weeks to see how the static grass progresses