I’ve seen a lot of imaginative uses of everyday items on this forum for modeling our pikes. So much so that I now tend to look at things I’m about to throw away and say “could I use this on the model railroad?”. The new year celebration last night brought such a moment. While using party poppers with my son I started staring at them in and thinking, “these might make a good base for modeling something”. However, I’m stuck as to what at this point. Here’s a pick of a couple of used poppers next to an HO scale vehicle.
I can see painting them silver or white, loping off the top and using them for some type of container or boiler but don’t have any good ideas beyond that. Let me know what you think and how these cheap shells could be used.
How about painting them gray for concrete and using them for the concrete base or piling(s) for a small to mid-sized bridge footings if you have any creeks or rivers or waterfronts on your layout?
I think that any bridge would have to be huge to require such large pilings. Ditto for any type of dock. My layout does not have anything that could require such a large structure. Also, the shape of the poppers (grooves in the middle) does not look like any kind of structural item that I can think of.
Can anyone think of a tank that would be of this size? Natural gas or some type of storage tank next to an industrial building?
Cut them, about an eighth inch above and below the neck transition. Glue two together, wide to wide. Cut them across the diameter, glue each half down to a flat concrete floor, voila, instant turbine generators. Add some hobby wire for steam piping, a control room, two reactor vessels, two cooling towers, chain link fence and a bunch of protestors and you have a nuclear power plant.
Blue christmas tree lights or blue LED’s could simulate a China Syndrome event. Melt some cow and sheep figures downwind from the accident to simulate fallout plume victims.
Have your hospital train standing by on the perimeter of the city, ready to run in supplies and relief, per FEMA guidelines. You’ll need decon tents, and temp housing for the refugees, usually mobile homes. In some third world countries, and a few US states, you can get away with housing the refugees in Conex containers, so have your cranes and flatcars polished up and rtr too.
That ought to hold you for a while, at least till you sleep off the effects of whatever party you were at last night.
