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Some super ideas here, but the pantyliners tops the list!! LOL, that is classic. A few things I have used: 1.) I have a large grain terminal on my HO layout. You know the large piles of corn that are out in fall especially, I went to the neighbors feed grinder and filled a 5 gallon pail of ground corn, it looks great scale-wise making corn piles. and smells realistic too. 2.) I use the steal shavings mentioned earlier from a shop-friend of mines shop to fill my gondolas, very nice for making ore. especially the natural rust colered shavings. To get that effect, just leave the shavings outside for about a week, giving them a mist of water 3-4 times during the week. 3.) I also have flat cars I use for hauling steel strips. What I did there was use black plastic "zip ties", cut ends off, and glue them in "stacks", and then bind them with white zip ties. The zip ties are lightweight too. 4.) For my other flat cars cars carrying coils of wire, I use ultra-thin guage (almost hair-like) copper wire. I get an endless supply from a friend who works in an electric motor manufacturing plant that they discard. I wind these tightly around those miniature spools that thread comes on and mount 4-6 on my flat cars. I paint the spools a flat gray before winding the wire on them and then a dab of glue secured the wound wire. Looks great. 5.) I also have a meat packing plant on my layout. One end of the building is open on one end for viewing. You know where they hang the sides of beef from hooks and the sides move on tracks mounted on the ceiling? I have very small eye bolts on the ceiling where I run heavy guage fishing line through. Mounted On the fishing lines I have very small fishhooks glued to the fishing line that I hang pieces of wadded up leather painted red/pink to simulate the beef. I have mounted near my control a ultra lite fishing reel that when I crank, the sides of beef rotate around the building as if they are being loaded from an assembly line into my refrigerator cars. Sounds complicated, but very realistic. 6.) For my grain elevator, I use white PVC pipe to make the silos and weather them with gray chalk with very small rust chalk lines. Its the best thing I have found. 7.) I also have a radio station located on my layout. What I used to make the four radio towers were old tv and stereo antennaes. The cable used to support these is "spider-wire" brand fishing lines secured to my base wrapped around a small screw, covered with lichen. The best part is when Im running my layout under low light, I have run up the hollow centers of the antennaes small guage wire and at four points on each antennae I have tiny red lights thatI drilled (tiny holes) on the antennaes to a relay that when I turn on, they all blink on-off and different intervals. At that same radio station I also have two satellite dishes that I made from two small, smooth coffee saucers my wife "donated", painted a slight gray. The dishes sit at a 30 degree angle or so and made the bases from old silverware, cut and ground to look like steel gridwork, very realistic in my opinion. The radio station is an exact replica of a radio station about 8 miles from my home that sits one mile from the real 1:1 BNSF line in my area. I modeled it from photos I took. Those are my favorite "home made" items
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