I've been using TrueScene FusionFiber to cover my layout and thought I'd post a review and some pics. Overall, this product is fantastic. My ONLY real nit is the stuff isn't inexpensive at $20/bag. They claim one bag will cover 15-20 square feet. My layout is 5x10 which is 50 square feet. I should be able to cover that in 3 bags but I've already gone through 2 and there's no way one bag will cover the remaining space so I just ordered two more bags to finish the job.
This is my first layout since I was a teenager and I had a 5x10 layout with a large plateau in the corner and a couple of hills, all made from pink foam board. What I wanted was a ground cover that was durable, held ground cover well (I remember back in the day touching the layout often meant have green dust on your fingers), was realistic and would break-up the overly flat look of a plywood base, and was sculptable so I could fill in gaps in my foam work.
I watched the videos on their site but still had a few questions so I sent them a fairly lengthy email. They responded the next business day with an even longer, detailed email addressing all my concerns and a few I hadn't thought of. That level of service was enough for me to submit an order for a bag. I received a confirmation email almost immediately and my order shipped via Priority Mail the next morning.
The material is white and basically looks and feels like quilt stuffing. I mixed it following the instructions and with some light avocado green acrylic paint. I mixed it a stainless salad bowl using the 1.5" and 3" plastic putty knives I was going to apply the mix with. After letting it sit the prescribed time and laying down some mesh tape on the smooth sections of pink foam I began to lay down the FusionFiber. When applying this stuff it's best to drop a small fist sized glob down and start spreading it out with a knife. As it spreads you'll want to hold the knife at a fairly shallow angle and press firmly. I put the material down to a thickness of 3/16"-1/4" which did a nice job of making the height of the Lionel FasTrack look a bit less pronounced. The material clung nicely to the mesh tape as well as the rougher contours of the foam I'd shaped with a surform and rasp. Once you have a decent area covered you'll want to go back and lightly smooth over any lines left by the putty knives. From there I dusted the area with a couple of shades of Woodland Scenics turf. To apply my trees I poke a hole in the material and carefully peeled it back to make an opening large enough for the base of the Woodland Scenics trees. Once the tree was in place I used a tongue depressor to press the material back into place. The material definitely took a while to dry. I'm in Seattle and my layout is in a below grade living room. In those conditions it took 4 days before the material had completely dried. Once dry, the material has a pliable hardness comparable to pink foam - you can dent it with your thumb if press hard. Clean up is pretty easy since the pigment is acrylic and cleans up with soap and water. Given the nature of the material I would NOT let any of it go down your drain pipe. Instead I wiped the remaining bit of material out of the bowl with a paper towel. One really nice aspect of this material is that If you start working with it and have to stop midway for some reason you won't be wasting any material. Even if it dries out completely you can easily rehydrate it by adding more acrylic tinted water.
The finished results were impressive, especially for a first timer. I really like how the material has a nice, natural uneven quality about it. Looks much more like real terrain than would be possibly using a mat material. So I've only covered the hills and 1/4 of the main table. I am curious to see if there will be an overall noise reduction once the entire board is covered. Also the material can be adjusted once it's in place. I bought a Lionel Weyerhauser saw mill operating accessory and was able to install it on an area already covered with FusionFiber. I simply set the sawmill on the layout, scored an outline with a nail and then used a box knife to cut ~1/16" inside the outline. I removed the area of FusionFiber, sprayed down the surround area with WetWater (water with a drop of detergent), peeled it back, set down and hooked up the sawmill and then peeled the FusionFiber back into place.
Here are some pics showing the area before, during and after application. I especially like how it creates nice smooth transitions around the low hill. I'm trying add several of these small mounds to break up the flatness.
