Gulash-izing My Scenery

I keep rewatching my whole Emery Gulash DVD collection. (I wore out my VHS Penn Central set, then wore out my first DVD Penn Cemtral set -- luckily, Green Frog ran a sale on the remastered PCs a few years ago.) One of the things that always inspires me is the foreground details he includes in his shots.

One frequent foreground anchor he uses is mounds of ballast and dirt. These are easy and inexpensive to include on layout scenery. Here's an example of some I recently spruced up, with other urban details:

The burned-out car is a cheapo Bachmann that's been worked over with a Dremel and some paint. I got the idea from Peter Feigenbaum.

He also often has shots of his railfan buddies, and he likes photos of railroad trucks and vans:

I always liked the shots he took of the Maumee River swing bridge in Toledo, especially the collection of relay cases, battery boxes, and so forth on one bank. Here's my version:

Here's a shot of the Maumee River relay cases I found on the web:

Here's a shot not directly inspired by Emery, but it shows where I'm "dirting in" the Bollinger Edgerly B&M-New Haven tower kit at Manhattan Transfer: