Looking for ideas on making scrap metal/junk piles

[dekker]

Any ideas? I have a scene on my layout that needs scrap junk piles. Metal,wood,trash etc. Thanks.

 

[dave1905]

Take aluminum foil and paint it splotches of different colors. Put some water in blender and drop small pieces of aluminum foil and shread them. Dry it off and spray with a little rust color.

Feed pieces of flat plastic through the credit card shredder slot and collect the shavings.

 

[NH Mike]

Anything you have laying around in the scrap box can work. Broken couplers or pull the plastic wheels off an axle if you replace your wheelsets with metal ones. Broken gears from an engine you repaired. Some building window castings that got messed up, include a broken piece of clear styrene to simulate broken glass. Vehicles you no longer like or no longer fit your plans can have a fender or two cut off and left abandoned after a good rust and weathering job. The box bodies from an old truck kit make a neat storaage shed next to a scrap pile. A piece of 1/4 x 5/16 rect styrene can be an old refrigerator with 2 thin strip styrene doors cemented on it ( HO size ).

Once you start digging around you'll come up with ideas.

 

[Irongrave]

if you do any wood working at all sawdust makes a good stand in for wood chips and doesn't take a lot to die it a red/rust color (little bit of red stain in a can with top and shake then when you pour it out you'll have some sculpting time before it dries and hardens a little.