Paul, thanks for posting the link. Quite a few interesting photos there.
At one time, we had a decent-sized collection of ceramic buildings that we used on the basement layout, but we've drastically reduced the number, sending most to other collectors or folks in the neighborhood that expressed interest. We kept about a dozen of our favorites, but hadn't used them for years. Then this year (2023), with the price of real Christmas trees through the roof, we decided to use an old artificial "pencil" we have (it was stored in the garage and hadn't been out of the box for so long I feared there might be badgers living in there, lol). It proved to be in satisfactory condition, so that's what we used for a tree.
I never liked the look of that four-legged stand that anchors it, and the two or three skirts we have just don't look so great, so we decided to use some white felt cut to fit around the tree, the stand, and over an old 48-inch round platform I made. To hide the stand, we broke out the ceramic houses and stacked those around the base of the tree, then a loop of 42-inch diameter O-27 gauge track. I ordered a roll of that corrugated brick paper skirting that's sold around the holidays, but it didn't come in until a week or so after Christmas. No worries, as what we had done proved serviceable.
Here's a few pics:
It turned out okay, masked the stand well, and visitors seemed to get a charge out of seeing the trains run. I'm hoping to have enough appropriately-sized cardboard houses by Christmas 2024 such that we can use those instead of the ceramics. We'll see...
Paul Too