HO scrap household appliances

[Bill Gill]

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.

[Lawton Maner]

Great start!  The water heaters should have more rust and pipe stubs sticking out of them. 

[finescalerr]

A very unique theme with some pretty decent representations. -- Russ

[Bill Gill]

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.

[Ray Dunakin]

For HO scale I'd say those are pretty awesome!

[Bill Gill]

Thanks, Ray. It's been fun trying to use odds and ends to come up with plausible appliances.

[Barney]

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

[Les Tindall]

The're wonderful considering the size they must be in HO. Certainly something different.
Les

[Bill Gill]

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.

[Les Tindall]

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

[Lawton Maner]

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.

[Sami]

details that give realism to a model

[Bill Gill]

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.

[SandiaPaul]

These are great, looking forward to seeing them in place!

[Bill Gill]

Thanks, Paul, me too. Right now Will is working on a different module and I'm eager to see the scrapyard one get started.