This is one of the fun things with trains, being able to reuse things on the layout, or being clever. I used to use cat litter sprayed with this gloss black spray paint to use as coal with the coal loader I had, it ended up looking like real coal, irregular pieces where the litter clumped together, and it worked fine in the feeder itself.
We had old car parts lying around, and for example the condensers from old car distributors made for pretty good industrial transformers, other bits and pieces came in handy, either as junk yard pieces, or for other things (a thing, I will add, gratefully of the past unless someone is running contact points for nostalgia sake in an old car). An old boxcar and caboose was turned into a unique MOW vehicle. An old smoke unit from a steam engine made for an interesting focus point on a tall smokestack I had made, looked like a scrubber or some sort.
