Newman Atkinson says:

Harper,
How much do you want to call it your own work? If you are just starting out you may want to work with some ready to go scenery and as you learn what you can and cannot do then you can indulge into some of this do it on your own stuff. I for one now do as much as I can myself. My allowed budget from the wife does not permit me to indulge into purchased scenery too much. After years of experience I am now hand laying my own switches, I am making trees out of hydrangea flowers. I find used buildings and fix them up. used rolling stock and are at or better than much of the ready to roll stuff out there now and at much less cost. People I get are in bulk and unpainted. I glue their feet to a pencil eraser for a handle and line them up in a rack. I take a color and do each person differently then move to the next color if needed. I have seen pre-painted as high as 25 dollars for five person set. I by bulk for about 14 dollars and divide that up by 72 and the price is cheap. A little paint labor and there you are. I have built my own smoke system for power plants that only uses water (no oils) will last all day without filling and unlike smelly oils that need drops every five minutes and also get hot. I am scratch building barns for a winter home of the Big Top Circus. I am building a Cracker Barrel restaurant out of an old western saloon plastic kit. I am now making round hay bales cents on the bale compared to the ready to go bales and they look that much better too. There is a youtube video showing you just how to do the bales. It is just how much you are willing to sit down and build or paint yourself. If you are like me I can get frustrated trying to get one project done and it does not go fast enough. I work on one project for a while and then pull the next project off the shelf a while. Glue and paint has to dry. I even make my own corn plants out of county road grass seed. and it looks better than any commercial one out there, but it takes time. I do that during ball games on TV. As you learn how to do some of this you will never go back to commercial made. and you can call it all your own work. Watch a fellow model railroader do a project as I did on several of these. That is how I learned to do the switches. When your ready then get your hands dirty and enjoy the work . Once you get the hang of each project you are good to go and it is fun. My newest is grinding my own foam and now getting ready to dye my own. Ready made tree foan is very expensive. One old foam pillow can make a lot of trees. I just tore a part my boys old computer chair. There was enough foam to probably do over 100 trees in it. Some Ritz Dye and Wa-La. My smoke system is powered by a table top pond mister and pressurized by an old computer fan. That will give me smoke coming out of 2 power plant stacks up several inches and away from the stacks 6 to 10 inches and it is all water fog. The next one will put the fog around the base of an old pirate ship along the water line in a setting of the pirates of the Caribbean being filmed on location of the gal walking the plank. It will include pontoon boats with directors and cameras and the gal going in and out on the plank. Oh yes lots of extra people . Your imagination is your paint brush, from Newman