Mostly, the answer will be NO.
The hard, thin plastic most things are packaged in now?
I cut it into rectangles small enough for my spare parts bin and use it to glaze windows in structures or passenger cars. And I cut the plastic base off of the 'little people' (after painting, if I paint them) and glue a small square to their feet so they won't fall over.
Tissue paper?
I mean the kind of stuff that's used in gifts, not snot rags.
Useful to wipe up spilled liquids or ball up to use as paint sponges. Or if used correctly with the plastic packaging, making a 'glazed window' effect.
The plastic (sorry, resin) sprues that most of your injection-molded plastic models are packaged with?
Cut, slice, or (miter) saw them up in tiny pieces and glue them to trees as fruits, birds (in the smaller scales), or Christmas ornaments. Use them to create your own pipework for an oil refinery. Or super-detail a scene with downspouts, garbage, drainpipes, etc.
The foam blocks electronics are packaged in?
Glue them together and shave them down for hilly scenery. Cut (or dig) out space in them and put some fragile things in them when you're not using them. Actually, that last one is kind of what they're made for anyway...
A lot of the things you toss can be used on your model railroad if you just stop to think for a moment. Hold it in your hand and turn it around a few times. Ponder. Imagine.
And what you may not realize, is that you're recycling and liking it!
Shirt cardboards for mockup buildings. Prescription bottles to hold parts. Shish kabob type skewers for uncoupling tools and telephone poles. Pieces of plastic sprues are really good to fill holes that need redrilling. Plastic straws painted to make pipes. Dirt from the back yard sifted for the scenery base coat.
I'll think of more.
Real gravel ballast made from rocks you find outside, or prototypical limestone-like coloring by using chunked limestone, like most rock pathways are made from.
Hit the rocks with a hammer until the chunks are the correct size for your particular scale.
While not really trash, it's still a way to make your roadbed more realistic. And keep the dust from pounding the rocks. Depending on the type of rock, it may look like snow, gravel, or sand.
Down here on the Gulf Coast, in the past, pea gravel was very often used for ballast because of local availability. One of my MR pals lived not far from a gravel pit and would retrieve buckets of the gravel in the turn in crushed to near dust by truck traffic. I haven't had that luxury and had to make my own by mixing 3 colors of buff, brown and tan N scale ballast to use on HO track, but it looks good on my Deep South branchline, and is a lot more regionally accurate for me than the grey granite everyone uses whether it is correct or not.
There's a new house under construction across the street from me. If I'd been building my benchwork I could have done a lot of it with the carpentry scraps of dimensional lumber and plywood they threw away.
Cereal box cardboard is also good for buildings and building mock ups. There are a lot of sites where OO scale buildings can be downloaded for printing on A4 size cardstock. Print them at 87% size on regular paper and they're perfect for glueing to the cereal box card to make HO buildings.
Len
I use bamboo skewers a lot to hold foam together while the glue dries. Sometimes, I use them like rebar. Once I've white glued foam layers together, I poke a hole in the foam with a skewer. Then extract it. Cover it with white glue. Stick it back in the hole. Snip it off level with the foam. It adds some sturdiest to the foam and helps keep the layers from pulling apart if you have to move your layout around.
The rebar idea is really cool. 😎
I use wood and MDF powder leftover from sanding with my machine sander a lot.
I use it as a base layer for the layout.
You can also use it as a paste mixed with PVA glue.
If it is to light in colour you can stain it with a vinagar/steelwool mixture.
Ton
I should have mentioned that I always put the skewers in at an angle.
To hijack Trainman203 comment on house construction.
Go talk to the foreman (white helmet) to see if you can pick up scraps with his blessing in the middle of the day (not illegal). Or take your chances and sneak around, possibly getting caught and dealt with for trespassing (illegal). And if you get his okay, see if you can borrow a helmet. Always watch where you're walking. I will probably repeat this phrase every time I post on this thread. You never know where inspiration may come from. A scrap of wood or bent metal thingy might remind you of something you could model. And look for sanding blocks that are all 'gunked up' with drywall dust and stuff, or otherwise torn. They come in more handy than sandpaper when modelling because of the harder, FLAT surface instead of the soft surface of the paper on your fingers. And a few flicks with your finger should knock off most of the dust.
And from Terry Toenges
If you paint the end of the skewer gray or brown and leave it sticking out of the walls, you can model either a building going up (gray) or coming down (brown).
Good idea bb. I hadn't thought of that.
It only stands to reason to ask to take wood scraps from a construction job. It would never occur to me to do otherwise. I didn't need anything so I never got that far. These are country boys building this house. No hard hats at all! No foreman either as best I can tell. Just a bunch of pickup trucks all over the place. Very "independent " sub contractors.
Whenever I see a house being built, the first thing I think is ..... where will the layout go? 😂
Of course, Terry, that also gives you an excuse reason to model a construction/demolition scene as well.
Whenever I'm making a new model, I 'drag out' my construction scene from Life-Like (sorry Bach Mann) and plop it down where the new building will go until it's finished, and I swap them out.
Trainamn203, I live in a fairly large city. Thus the warning to all. But whatever works in your area, right?
Another tip:
Those flexible foam paper-like sheets some small electronics are packaged in (and some model train cars, such as Bachmann's Old Time passenger car [Union Pacific])? Snow. Just cut the shapes of vertical things (trees building, people, but not bushes) out of it and lay it down. Don't bother gluing it as you can then change the scenery for non-winter scenes.
I love saving kit structure models that someone else has built badly and often end up in the trash. They often come from estates and are often discontinued kits of very nice buildings. I've got an interlocking tower right now, I believe to be an old Life-Like kit for maybe a B&O building, that some moron put doors and windows in the wrong places and spilled glue around it at the same time. However, its decorative architecture is right up the practices of the old Iron Mountain Route, a major Missouri Pacific predecessor. It's bones are perfect for that. Since I model an MP sub, it spoke to me to save it and I'm in the middle of renovation right now. It's going to be the Midland yard office.
Ooh! Good luck! I hope you'll post pictures when you're done!
And estate/yard sales are great places to pick up model stuff for pennies on the dollar.
And don't forget about Flea Markets! My local one has a couple of 'permanent' stalls near the back, and one of them happens to be a train booth. Well, mostly trains (90%). Some cars, ceramics, etc. There's even an O/HO/N 4x8 in the middle of it, in three or four tiers.
This one is going along in bits and pieces. I was able to get a couple of incorrectly applied moldings off of it the other night with minimal impact, and cleaned up some flashing the builder had left on. I'll have to chisel off some small remaining pieces left behind, and clean some spilled glue off.
The building is molded in very close to correct yellow with brown trim so I'll see if touch up here and there will be good enough. Then, dullcote the building and put the window glass in.
I'm going to put a light inside and normally with an unbuilt kit you'd paint the inside of the walls black to keep the walls from glowing. Since I can't disassemble the model, I'm going to cover the inside of the walls with black construction paper with window cut outs. I'll put in a floor and some walls, add window shades to hide the unfinished interior, put a light inside, add a couple of lighted gooseneck exterior lights, and I'll have one fine Iron Mountain yard Office!
Here it is
https://m.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-HO-Scale-Tyco-Interlocking-Tower-7773-Assembled-/162847069231
Have you thought about spray painting the inside black?
Spraying the insides of the walls won't work on this small assembled building, which can't be disassembled. The spray will meet the plastic interior at too low an angle for good coverage, and even with masking the exterior of the walls which is needed, overspray will get on the insides of the window casings. It's just too messy to be practical.
Thats why I like these rescue dog structures. The challenge of the rescue. I've done about a dozen for a club already.