“Eyes Open!” – Finding Scenery Materials Everywhere
By Bill Fuller, TCA# 87-26705 Summer e*Train 2023
In the movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Allan Quatermain, played by Sean Connery, teaches a brash young Secret Service agent how to hit his target with the admonishment, “Keep your eyes open, Boy!” This, it turns out, is sound advice for all of us amateur layout builders. Scenic effects are to be found everywhere and are surprisingly adaptable to model railroading. Here are some examples that draw oohs and ahs from visitors to the train room. I offer them not as exemplars to be copied but as inspirations for others’ own creativity.
A few unpaved roads wend their way through parts of the layout. These began life as rolls of thin cork shelf liner for kitchen cabinets. Cut from the roll, lightly tacked down with glue, and anointed with fine rock ballast intended for smaller scales, the cork becomes a nicely groomed but obviously unpaved graveled road. This one is private railroad property used by switch tower personnel to reach their assigned tower.
GRAVEL ROAD FROM CORK SHELF LINER
Elsewhere, away from kitchen self liners, a craft store scrapbooking display yields some useful objects such as rowboats and bicycles. These are very low relief, almost two-dimensional, stickers meant to ornament scrapbook pages. Used at some distance from the viewer, however, their “flatness” is not apparent.
THE ROWBOAT (right) AND BICYCLE (left) ARE LOW-RELIEF STICKERS INTENDED FOR SCRAPBOOK PAGES
In need of an industrial chimney for a manufacturing scene? Look no farther than the plastic core from a spool of yarn. One’s spouse’s crochet drawer might be a good place to find one. This example has been augmented by a Miller Engineering sign indicating the industry, and one day I may even get around to installing a smoke generator inside it.
THE BLACK PLASTIC CORE FROM A SPOOL OF YARN BECOMES AN INDUSTRIAL SMOKESTACK
Holiday display products from brands such as Department 56 and Lemax have long been part of many folks’ O scale layouts, and, sometimes with a little paint, can look quite realistic. Quite a nice variety of such products can be found on online auction sites, often at substantial reductions from their original purchase prices. Following are only a few examples of such holiday items in use year round on a decidedly non-Christmas and non-winter layout.
DEPT 56 MANUAL CRANE AND WORK LIGHT
DEPT 56 LIGHT ATOP WOODEN POLE
FARM WITH DEPT 56 WINDMILL AND WATER TOWER
DEPT 56 FLAGPOLE AND CANNON BY CITY PARK
DEPT 56 GAZEBO WITH SNOW PAINTED OVER
DEPT 56 INDUSTRIAL AREA CHAIN LINK FENCE
We can also find items made for smaller scales that work just fine in O scale scenes. N scale Bavarian village kits create an effective forced-perspective appearance of distance at the rear of an O scale layout, and an N scale mine car turns into a flower planter at the edge of an O scale passenger platform.
N SCALE BUILDINGS CREATE A FORCED PERSPECTIVE, ENHANCING THE ILLUSION OF DISTANCE
AN N SCALE MINE CAR IS A PLANTER WITH FLOWERS ON A PASSENGER PLATFORM
Frequently, odds and ends can be adapted to enhance the appearance of O scale buildings and accessories. The American Flyer (later reissued by Lionel) operating fork lift always appeared problematic with no safety railing to prevent serious, back-breaking falls by unwary workers on its deck. Rummaging in the junk drawer, however, produced an empty sprue left over from some plastic kit. Painted “safety orange” and glued to the forklift deck, it instantly became a welded steel railing to prevent any worker from walking backwards to his doom.
AN OLD SPRUE THAT ONCE HELD PLASTIC KIT PARTS TOGETHER BECOMES A SAFETY RAILING
Kitchen supply stores, yarn supplies, holiday décor shops, craft stores, hobby shops with HO and N scale items, even junk drawers – scenic details abound wherever one looks. Adopt the mindset of “How can I adapt that thing to work on the layout?” and remember Allan Quatermain’s admonition: “Eyes Open!” There’s practically no limit to what one can discover and put to use to create a world in miniature.
