After taking a couple of days off I decided to present something slightly different. Up until now I've covered factory produced products but there is a segment of the train hobby that takes rusty, dusty, messed-up old stuff and renovates them. Some people 'restore', they take an engine or piece of rolling stock and after painting and decaling and whatever else it takes, make it look factory fresh. Other people change the original graphics and paint schemes to come up with items never produced. The gentlemen featured here does the latter, but with a twist. His name is Peter Wassmiller and sells on eBay under the name 'homemadetoys'. His specialty is taking old Marx tin and plastic train pieces and turning them into something totally different than their original. Much of what he adds to the pieces are hand-made formed metal parts. But unlike other people, all of Peter's lettering is done by hand, versus decals. For me, this puts his work into more of a Folk Art category. I may be wrong but that's my own personal take on it. Today's example is based on Marx's venerable 6" 4-wheel tin-litho caboose. The body has been taken off of its frame and placed on a hand-made metal base with metal fence, all of which is then painted and hand-lettered. Because of its small footprint something like this doesn't take up a lot train layout real estate and will fit in on any layout. Hope ya like. Enjoy!
