Lets see how creative and resourceful (or “cheap”?!) modelers are.
Show us something you made out of the strangest thing(s)!
Or even the most mundane things!
Coffee creamer containers, for example, make nice trash cans in G scale.
The larger silica gel “pillows” make for feed bags for G scale. The canisters of silica gel can be used to represent drums of whatever…oil, kerosene etc. in O and HO scale.They come in different sizes too.
If you can, post pictures of your handiwork please!
This isn’t something that I did, but I definately took note. In the last issue of Realistic Layouts from Kalmbach, there was an article where the modeler used a toothpaste tube cap as part of the roof details on a gas station he did. I thought that was really interesting and creative (looked great).
Hi G: I love these kinds of threads. Here’s one of mine. This is a transfer pump and filters in my loco service area. The large filter on the left was a flared copper fitting with styrene glued to the top and rounded. The pump in the center was the center section of an Atlas switch machine. The filter on the right was a short piece of plastic tubing with styrene glued and rounded on top. The concrete base is .080 styrene. The roof was a left over piece from another project. The timber frame was out of the goody box. The pipe and fittings were from Walthers pipe kit. The big valve was cut from a HO lamp post. I’ve also included a picture of what this pump was based on. This was in Kalmbach book “Locomotive Servicing Terminals” by Marty McGuirk.
I made some flags/bunting for a Walthers HO gas station out of red, white, and blue star confetti and dental floss. Cut the points off of the stars for the triangles and used dental floss (unscented) for the line. Pretty simple and dirt cheap, but effective when all done:
I’m not sure if this qualifies or not but I once assembled a horse transfer car - I believe that’s what they were called - and I put some real horse transfer inside; it took six weeks to air out the club room!
Mine is only partially creative: I made a standpipe (on the right) from some old pen parts and stuff from a disposable lighter, although the spout is from Grandt Line. The one on the left is by Tichy, but I needed one with a longer spout to service two adjacent tracks.
Below is a scene in an small area near where a branch line connects with the main line in Prairie View. From the left you will see a stack of rail in front of the caboose. The rail is obsolete brass rail. The shed was made from kit-bashing left overs and scrap plastic. The interlocking tower should look familair because it started as a badly broken Plasticville tower. The oil tank at the tower was from an old broken N scale European tank car.
well, dont have a picture right now, but i built a water tower out of two 3-liter coke bottle caps. just glued them together and put some styrene legs on it. stoood it up and painted it.
I made these bridge piers from cheap chip brush paint handles. I cut them down to height. They’re available in widths 3/4" to 4", so you can make a variety of bridge sizes.
Below they are to the right side. I needed to widen the bridge. Tha back story is with the increased traffic in the city, a wider bridge was need. The modern techinques are being used next to the older supports.
The next 2 shots are where they will be install at the club I belong to.
Hi there UP, I presume that you are talking N scale for a water tower? And I assume that your caps are about the same size as they are here is Australia?
Not as imaginative as the ones above, but this plank fence is made of coffee stirrers:
I’m saving some of those things that pop up when the turkey is cooked to use for outdoor tables at a restaurant. I’ve also got a couple of bottle caps which I’ve painted and decalled to use as a sign on top of my Strumpet Brewery. Yeah, I had to eat the turkey and drink the beer to get these items, but sometimes you’ve just got to take one for the team, y’know?
This is a great thread. By the way, this month’s RMC has an article on the very same subject.
It’s great that we’re seeing that good old ingenuity coming out again, after a few years where buy-and-plop seemed to get all the attention. I’m seeing some really neat and really original ideas here.
Mine have been pretty dull by comparison. I have a water tank made from a mushroom can wrapped in a scribed cereal-box cardboard wrapper, a Life-Like Teakettle remotored with a tape-player motor, and a small house made of cereal-box cardboard with grocery-sack shingles. I used to use cereal boxes as my standard building material, but lost most of the buildings over the years.
I usually use kit parts for my odds and ends, but here is an original. I made the hay bales from scotch brite cut to length and rolled and glued in place. I then painted it a yellowish tan color and then cut the bristles from a paint brush and glued them all over the scotchbrite. Sure did make for some convincing bales of hay…oh yeah, and the fence was built from electrical wire stripped of the insulation soldered to brass tubing…chuck
