Junkyard junk

[jockellis]

Anyone bought any HO items to use as junk in a junkyard? Does anyone make a set of such?
Jock Ellis
Cumming, GA US of A

[MisterBeasley]

Go to www.walthers.com and search for "junk." There are 2 pages of items.

Others have suggested "any coupler other than a Kadee" makes good gondola loads, etc.

[orsonroy]

I save every bit & piece off every kit I buy, most of which ends up in my "future junk" pile. Dig through plastic kits of battleships and other odd things for LOTS of junk. And the best idea for large quantities of junk comes from a modeler in my area: add candy wrappers (Hershey Kisses are his favorite) into an OLD blender, chop well, and glue down!

[SpaceMouse]

Like the others I have saved all the spare parts. I just filled an engine house with spare parts made from "parts trees" from models. You can cut these in interesting ways to look like pumps and generators, etc. Rust them up and use them for filler under the few pieces of junk that look like someting if you eye for detail too keen.

[ndbprr]

Take a strip of aluminum foil and paint some stripes on it with whatever paint you have on hand. Rail brown and rust are the best. then chop it in 2"squares and feed it intoa water filled blender. Drain the water off and you have a great pile of rusty scrap metal. Just do it when you wkfe isn't home (or parents if you are that young)!

[Anonymous]

Jock,

I have taken old Suydam metal kits and chopped up the pieces, painted them rusty and bent em all up. Click on the link in my signature and look at the first picture for an example of my junkyard from the old layout. The other suggestion I have is to use anything that remotely resembles junk as long as it is not recognizable as anything but junk..... I use lots of old model parts as long as they don't read as model parts..

[West Coast S]

Go to any machine shop, gather some shavings and cuttings, spread the shavings out over some of window screen and place outside for couple of weeks..

To me, the unifomity of the blended foil just dosen't do it. A side benifit to the outdoor method is you can scrape off some of rust and use it as weathering, what better to simulate rust then the real deal.[^]

[Seamonster]

I saw an article somewhere showing how someone knocked some of the rusted metal off his car and used that. Can't get more realistic that that!

[Anonymous]

Anything you buy with the BACHMANN name on it will fit right in to a junk yard!
Everything they make is pure JUNK!!!!!
gtr

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by gtirr

Anything you buy with the BACHMANN name on it will fit right in to a junk yard!
Everything they make is pure JUNK!!!!!
gtr

Patently absurd and simplistic. Pure subjective opinion and, lacking argument, is without merit.

A more helpful suggestion: Either here or on another forum, a modeler built an auto recycling center & using HO scale cars as "masters," made aluminum foil car bodies by molding it around the masters. These he then painted & "crushed."

Very realistic & extremely cheap. Wish I thought of it.

Wayne

[jockellis]

G'day, Y'all,
Thanks for all the ideas. Re: Bachmann, at the Great Train Store in Atlanta, no engines used in our HO bubble lasted as long as Bachmann Spectrums. I really like the idea of the foil cars. I work in a machine shop and can get the heavy foil used by the toolmakers to wrap parts to be heat treated. This should make a very strong car. I've been wanting to try to make dies so that I can make the metal bracing for single sheath, outside frame boxcars. I think it would be strong enough and thin enough to make a good detail park.
Trainnut 1250, your old layout looks awesome! I've got a long way to go to get that realism.
Jock Ellis
Cumming, US of A

[dwRavenstar]

QUOTE: Originally posted by gtirr

Anything you buy with the BACHMANN name on it will fit right in to a junk yard!
Everything they make is pure JUNK!!!!!
gtr

One man's junk..............................

I've yet to see a kit of any type that didn't get hours of painting, detailing and other additions and tweaking done to it before I'd been satisfied enough to include it on any layout. It's just the nature of the beast.

Looking at an actual junk pile you might have to think a bit to figure out what certain items had been in their useful life. When modelling a junk pile the process works in reverse, find anything, anywhere and think what useful item it might have been before someone took a BFH, removed it from the shop and dragged it out to the refuse pile.

Dave (dwRavenstar)

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Either here or on another forum, a modeler built an auto recycling center & using HO scale cars as "masters," made aluminum foil car bodies by molding it around the masters. These he then painted & "crushed."

Very realistic & extremely cheap. Wish I thought of it.

Wayne

Cool idea...Thanks for sharing

[jockellis]

G'day, Y'all,
Did anyone notice the photograph by Lou Sassi in this month's MR of the Atlantic something RR that showed a flat car hauling a spark plug. It looks somewhat like a turbine that has bee pulled out of service and is darkened by the continual heat.
And on the cover, the "old" railroad has a Corvette in the far background ahead of a '40s era car.
Jock Ellis
Cumming, GA US of A

[RMax1]

I took an old wind chime apart and made the parts into a stack of pipes. Threw them out back of a building on the layout and looks good. I'll search the house for weird things to use. I saw the spark plug on the back of the flatcar and went what the ???? Did they use the chain method also in the magazine this month? Plastic strips, left over kit parts and thin balsa wood are all good.

RMax1

[JPowell]

When building a structure from a kit, save the sprues, paint with white, black, or any other color you see @ a construction site and use them as scrap pipes

[RedLeader]

I used to have a shelf with 8 model (1:72) airplanes. One day the thing collapesd and planes "flew" over 6ft to the ground resulting in my ex-model-plane-collection. The poor things were FUBAR, so there I had a perfect source for my junk gondolas. They are full of old flaps and landing gears. One have a full wing section a section of the fuselage and a couple of F-18 tail fins.

[gmpullman]

I think it's "Chooch" who makes all those neat resin car loads and stuff, well they have several "piles" of junk available. I have a few in my junkyard. They also make Junk car loads. the perfect compliment to the Walthers crane with the magnet attachment on the hook!
ED

[gmpullman]

Here's the link to Chooch Enterprises...
http://www.choochenterprises.com/index.html
But they don't show the junkyard piles... maybe they aren't a current production. e-mail them and ask...
ED

[hoscalelarry]

QUOTE: Originally posted by RedLeader

I used to have a shelf with 8 model (1:72) airplanes. One day the thing collapesd and planes "flew" over 6ft to the ground resulting in my ex-model-plane-collection. The poor things were FUBAR, so there I had a perfect source for my junk gondolas. They are full of old flaps and landing gears. One have a full wing section a section of the fuselage and a couple of F-18 tail fins.

RedLeader ... I haven't seen the "FUBAR" word since my Navy days in the 60's & 70's. I thought I was only one useing it, because around here everyone 'looks at me' and ask "what is that"

Larry