today i found the best place to find free ground cover. if you haven’t, look at sub divisions with cement curbs. in cul de sacs also. very fine dirt and fine gravel collect at a point by the road. rain and erosion help also. only reason i looked and found this is because of my job. hope this helps.
Got a bunch of free sand at a new Wall Greens. Worked out well after I strained it.
Don’t forget to run a magnet over your collection. Little bits of metal can really mess up the little magnetic motors of your locos.
Have fun,
A few steps out my back door yields me an unlimited amount of free sand, hence the reason grass doesn’t grow here unless you bring in real dirt and irrigation. make sure you first run a good magnet through your free dirt and then bake it in an oven for at least 30 minutes at about 400 degrees. to kill all the microbes living in it.or your free dirt will reak havoc on your dcc system.
MNDOT is doing a major freeway construction project about 3 miles away from me. I noticed that would be a good source for a few buckets ground cover as I was leaving the local fleet farm store thats parking lot is at the embankment of the project. I didnt grab any though.
My father-in-law’s got a sand and gravel pit. All the free ground cover I could ever want.