Lionel 919 grass was (is) green dyed sawdust. The dyes that Lionel used never produced a striking green, and after 40+ years, the product as it is usually found today consists of a tan to greyish green course sawdust. Most bags of this are badly faded, even NOS. When I did my reproduction Lionel display, I found several bags of Lionel 919 grass that were pristene NOS. Not one of them had hardly any color left to them, and none of them matched. I was forced to blend the entire batch together and add some Life-Like green grass (more on this below) to bring the color to that of a new original boxed Lionel display (D261) that I was matching. There is really nothing that is comparable on the market today that I know of. Several years ago, green dyed sawdust was available from Life-Like, although the garish green of this "grass" was unlike the original Lionel product. You could get a reasonable facsimile by combining one part Life-Like "grass" with three parts "earth", which was undyed tan sawdust, but the Life Like grass and earth were a finer cut of sawdust than the original Lionel product, which was probably the sweepings of the carpentry shop at the factory. Unfortunately, Life-Like does not make this product any longer, they have gone to the more realistic ground foam. Other than using the Lionel 919 grass, the only other option to replicate this today would be to dye your own sawdust.



FrankG