From the home office in my fevered brain, the top ten least popular scenery details (if someone replies that they actually have one of these on their layout, my head will explode). Feel free to make the list longer with more of your own ideas.
Properly scaled squashed pennies that some kid left on the tracks.
Four-leaf clovers to sparingly salt in among the botanically accurate 3-leaf clovers you’ve already laid down in a meadow.
Woman painting her toenails, nail polish color accurate to Mary Kay products released in 1987.
Z-scale rivets to be held in bucket of high-steel construction worker figure.
Roseanne Barr, O-scale
1934 Nuremburg Rally scene
Squashed cow, self-adhesive to attach to front of locomotive
Flatcar load: Acme products en route for delivery to Wile E. Coyote
Let’s not forget the carnival scene, complete with the kid regurgitating his cotton candy all over the Scrambler…
Or the track side golf course, with the MRC sound system providing a steady stream of swear words…
This one’s a bit dated, but it actually did exist on a local hobby store’s layout… The Presidential Motorcade parked in front of the “No Tell Motel” with the secret service guys standing around looking at their watches…
Seen from a 1:1 scale tourist train, never modeled - deceased antelope hung up in a barbed-wire fence.[:O][xx(]
As for the centerfolds - I thought this was, “Least Popular…”[:-^] (IIRC, 1967 was a great year for centerfolds. There were some pretty good Page 3 girls about then, too.)
Chuck (dirty old man modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
I’ve seen plenty of scale dogs lifting their legs next to a fire hydrant. But never seen one squatting over a freshly squeezed dog turd, so that’s my vote for least favorite.
I received a kit (from my parents!) that made 4 outhouses - no eyebrows raised here. It included a fellow who was to be placed as a stand-up user of the outhouse with the open door, and he was anatomically correct! I’m not a prude by any means, but he went in the junk box (I just can’t bring myself to put him on my layout).
When I showed him to my 13 year-old nephew he laughed so hard that I gave it to him. Now the urinating fellow makes appearances on my nephew’s layout - usually he’s discharging overboard from a caboose.
