I was looking at a video on making a basic layout on the Model Railroader site and they used a Woodland Scenic grass mat. This seems to be grass of some sort on a thin vinyl mat. It looked simple to use but I was wondering whether anyone had experience of actually using it and how Australian the colours looked. Is Woodland the only supplier?

Iain

afik only one supplier of the product  but there are 5 different types of grass cover sheets.  http://woodlandscenics.woodlandscenics.com/Show/category/ReadyGrassVinylMat/page/2

There's lots of grass mats from different suppliers, some far more realistic than others. Pop over to http://www.sceneryexpress.com/departments.asp?dept=1032 and have a look at the mats from Silflor, then work through the other links as there's similar mats from Heki, Busch and others. The better looking mats cost a lot more but for good reason. The cheaper mats still have a lot of uses, especially as a base material to build upon with a variety of other grasses and shrubs, etc. The cheaper mats also have a slight problem in that the grass fibres are often quite shiny and don't look so real when they reflect light like a mirror (a light dusting of paint from an airbrush can reduce the problem considerably and also remove the colour sameness from the mat). There's a couple of suppliers for these mats in Australia, Orient Express in SA has the Silflor range.

Have a look at http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.reflektion.info%2Fhtml%2F5400_061207_1_matten.html for a demo of using bits of different mats to create a more realistic scene.

Grass mats are good if you want to put in a lot of grass quick or you have a lot of grass to do. Some are just a paper with grass glued to it and others use all kinds of stuff with grass glued to it. They are simple to use once you get the hang of making the odd shaped pieces that you will need. The only draw back to them though is that the colour on most is consistent right across the mat. And many are way too bright if you are doing an Australian layout. But for things like lawn and parks etc they are excellent but for grass out in the bush they leave a lot to be desired actually.

I was thinking more along the lines of a quick base on which more specific grass and shrubs and trees could be added but I'd need to get a brown/yellow shade rather than the verdant green shown in the adds.

Iain