My son, Will, soon will be starting a layout module with a fair sized scrapyard covering most of it.
As an experiment I tried modeling some beat up appliances to help detail the scene. There are some
commercially available HO appliances, but this seemed like more fun.
None of these are highly accurate, or prototypical. The intent is to eventually make enough of them that they will
give a convincing impression of a variety of junked appliances when clustered together.
Here is the first batch, 16 appliances. They don't look like a mass of scrap in a yard, so many more yet to come.
Click on the photo to enlarge it.
Great start! The water heaters should have more rust and pipe stubs sticking out of them.
A very unique theme with some pretty decent representations. -- Russ
Thanks, Lawton. Here's a more recent view of the water heaters so far. You can see some now do have cut off stubs of copper waterlines. A couple others already had the copper salvaged. The gray one on the far right is a newer, all plastic tank whose electronics fried, not much rust.
Russ, The appliance section of Will's scrapyard will be near the front of the module. I'm hoping the sheer number will distract viewers from examining any individual piece too closely. There are 3D printed HO appliances for sale, but only in a limited variety of types and versions at present. There are also some British HO scale paper models.
After looking at prototype scrapyard photos, I went down a rabbit hole of trying to see how many different ones I could make without going any more bonkers :) Here are a couple washers that got fiddled with a little more. I'm hoping I can eventually make enough appliances with slightly more details to surround those with lesser details.
For HO scale I'd say those are pretty awesome!
Thanks, Ray. It's been fun trying to use odds and ends to come up with plausible appliances.
Looking good Bill - in our local refuge yard or as they call it now "recycling centre" there are always piles (more like mountains) of Upright Vacuum Cleaners I always ask myself
"where the hell do they all come from"
Barney
The're wonderful considering the size they must be in HO. Certainly something different.
Les
Thanks, Barney. Glad you looked in. Did you notice something about most of those appliances that hadn't
been mentioned yet? Many of that first batch started as Lego blocks :) They turned out to be between very
close and close enough to the actual dimensions of some common household appliances.
It's also the same here, junkyar..oops, scrapya..um, recycling centers have sometimes stacks of old appliances or
occasionally some lined up in neat rows, I guess so backyard repairmen can salvage parts. Others just have
a mountain of smashed and crushed appliances. I've been cutting small panels out of aluminum (aluminium)
beer cans where I can get an all white enamel looking exterior and a "steel" colored (coloured) interior and then
crumpling them up for a mound of scrap steel in another part of the yard.
I'm also thinking about some microwave ovens, dishwashers, freezers. Hadn't thought about vacuums. Good idea.
Thanks, Les. After I started making some appliances I stumbled on a YouTube video of a British model railroad that
passes by a scrapyard and noticed it has a small pile of old appliances. It looks very convincing at a distance, though close up
you can see that there is only one version of each type of appliance. Since the appliances I'm making will be near the front edge
of the module, I thought a mix would work better.
The idea of using aluminium beer cans sounds great, it's just the "hassle" of having to drink the contents to get at the metal!! (Thanks for the translations!)
Les
Les:
Sometimes the sacrifices we are forced to take for our art can be grueling. But, we soldier through because of the needs of our art! Model responsibly and do not use sharp items after collecting raw materials.
Bill:
There was an article on the BBC news about a year ago about a fox who was raising her kits in an abandoned stove so you also need to look into the fauna which calls a recycling center home.
details that give realism to a model
Lawton, Our neighborhood has several resident fox that tiptoe through backyards , avoiding the coyotes, so good idea to introduce a bit of wildlife. The scrapyard will be on the edge of a small urban area.
Sami, Thanks.
These are great, looking forward to seeing them in place!
Thanks, Paul, me too. Right now Will is working on a different module and I'm eager to see the scrapyard one get started.
Bill:
DO NOT allow your son to name the recycling (politically correct name) center Sanford and Son. ;D
Lawton, well, he actually is using 2/3s of that name. The prototype his yard will be based on is:
R.K. Freeman & Son...
But, maybe - per your earlier email - There could be a Redd Foxx with a den on the grounds.
At least that won't be the "big one", Elizabeth :)
(For non American members, the two posts above are full of early 1970s, American TV insider sitcom references
That Lawton can surely explain if you ask him ;) )
Here are a couple more scrapped washers & dryers.
These are excellent Bill, especially given the diminutive scale. Looking forward to seeing the completed scene.
After I retired at the ripe old age of 53 I needed something to do....So I started Scraping I really liked the mad money I made every week ;D And the scrap yards I went to had Massive Piles of metal must of scraped Hundreds of Water heaters/ washers & dryers ;)
Craig, You're right, I found lots of photos of mounds of metal, and some of heaped up mounds of appliances or others stacked carefully, but much higher than you'd think they ought to be. The scrapyard Will will model was medium size, and aerial photos seem to show a cluster of appliances near a hydraulic crusher, so I hope I won't have to make a bazillion to capture the scene.
Make the outer ones like you are doing now and the inner ones just painted blocks which have been weathered. In fact, since you are going to stack them, most only need one side to look like an appliance.