Thrifting/antiquing/flea Market Shopping Headcanons, Continued. Ft. Basically Everyone Else In The Cast.

Thrifting/antiquing/flea market shopping headcanons, continued. Ft. basically everyone else in the cast.

Other engines:

Greaseball buys a lot of used car/other machine parts, he gravitates towards overbuilt 50s equipment that’s easy to modify and repair so he goes to the used market a lot.  He’s relatively “typical” size and tends to have an easier time than many others finding used clothes. The Gang are his flying monkeys looking for stuff for him… to mixed results.

McCoy and Rusty collect old prewar/postwar era toy and model trains.  Whenever they see electric ones they get confused and call it a “trolley”, alien artifact, or “sci fi revisionist nonsense”.  

The Nationals are not opposed to doing a little shopping while abroad, it can be really fun to thrift/vintage shop overseas.  Caveat: there’s probably even funnier answers to this section based on what people actually like buying abroad irl but I don’t know enough about that so I’m going off vibes.  Very open to suggestions if you have fun more cultural ones.  

Ruhrgold gets excited by American amusement park and carnival stuff (merch, models, etc) because Germany has a strong culture of them that’s very different from the US so they’re a real novelty to him.

The British Engine likes miniatures.  Cartoonishly tiny versions of things because they are tiny by train standards due to the British loading gauge.  

The Japanese Engine LOVES the New York subway system and thinks New York is way cooler and more glamorous than it really is.  Buys all kinds of stuff related to the romantic ideal of the city and especially its trains.  Goes nuts for any kind of subway stuff they’ve seen in movies and associates with exciting foreign cities.  (This bit is based on actual sentiment among some Japanese railfans and 80s city pop) 

Coco/Bobo- god help me it’s hard to think of anything for these two, I just imagine them shaking their heads in disappointment.  I could see them being bafflingly excited by anything involving the Milwaukee Road since it was an early influence on early French rail electrification.  

Turnov will quietly get banned or hard to acquire music and media to smuggle home, probably skewing towards punk rock

Espresso and Electra are often into the same Italian designers but they are very different sizes and thus have a mutual truce. 

(Not doing the Wembley engines because I just don’t know enough about them and they don’t have strong real-life inspirations to draw from)

FREIGHT

Dustin knows what to look for in terms of used workwear and will point it out to the other freights (and other people in general).  Poor guy tends to leave disappointed since big and tall tends to be very hard to find used, but he loves to help others.  

Especially Flat-Top, who’s newer to it and doesn’t really know what to look for for his DIY projects.  If they find something good that just has some damage/needs repairs, he loves patching stuff up in typical punk fashion.  

The Rockies and Hip Hoppers follow Dustin around like a line of ducklings when he goes to mineral society shows.  You can get some great deals on Cool Rocks at them since a lot of the sellers are just rockhounds selling off their extras or selling deceased members’ collections off vs more commercial vendors.  Morbid side note: nothing makes you feel more impermanent than buying a dead guy’s Cool Rocks, knowing they have been here for millions of years and will outlive you by orders of magnitudes unless something truly catastrophic happens.

Rockies tend to look for lightly used sports equipment.  Hoppers go for the logomania brands Electra rejects and try to convince them that they’re actually cool. 

CB always goes for old radios and electronics of course, often teaming up with Electra to look for stuff to cannibalize for parts.  Evil Twink Caboose is into tinplate toys and often successfully convinces Rusty that they’re cool.  It’s always something that secretly has lead paint or sketchy ancient electronics though. Post 2018 Caboose likes novelty piggy banks and will hide evidence of his crimes inside things he sells/donates to rid himself of it.

Slick is excited by unusual plastics, especially collectible/rare stuff like Bakelite.  I think she would enjoy plastic dinos and old gas station merch.  

Porter hangs around Dustin and the Rockies/Hoppers at rock shows looking for coal and hand tools for rock collecting

Lumber views all wood in terms of burnability and everyone goes out of their way to keep him away from nice old furniture.  He WILL chuck that nice old hardwood in a fireplace even if it’s a bespoke artisan piece.  It’s been very hard to shake him from his ways.

Hydra likes airship and zeppelin related stuff.  Sketchy old chemistry sets that may or may not have actual uranium or instructions on how to make things explode too.

COMPONENTS

Volta is always looking for stuff to mod in her typical gothy DIY projects. She often comes out with a baffling assortment of clothes but somehow makes something cool from them.  Also drawn to VERY warm winterwear and will go on and on about what produces the best insulation.  And snowglobes.  I could see her being into snowglobes.

Joule always manages to find stuff with sketchy chemicals, asbestos, or other toxic things in them from back in the day when that was accepted.  She has to be lured away with cute ceramic animal figurines.  

Purse is always looking in pockets and compartments for money and money alone.  He’s probably the only one who’s actually a reseller and goes for items he knows he can flip for a lot.  If the cashier takes too long to calculate things he’ll often whip out a sheet of paper and do the math by hand at light speed. 

Krupp looks for more of the obscure/European tool and electronic brands that Greaseball doesn’t know and Electra is kind of sketchy on.  Also Kraftwerk media.  He will inspect any CD/record/etc looking for rarities.  Also excited by unusual hardware regardless of true usefulness.

Killerwatt pretends to know what Krupp is talking about and silently judges display cases based on security. 

MISC

The Marshalls are always on the lookout for skate and scooter parts

Control hates clothes shopping with their mom no matter where they go but can be bribed by the offer of getting a new toy train at the end