To reliably attach scale people to a layout, start with their feet. Using a superfine fingernail polishing stick, very gently sand the bottoms of the shoes until you see nice clean, flat patches of white styrene. Next, apply a tiny dab of thick CA (I use Gorilla Superglue) to a scrap of styrene and, holding the figure in a pair of fine tweezers, lightly dip their feet in the glue; then position the figure on the layout—preferably on a relatively smooth, flat surface. [ ... ]

Scratch building is defined in Wikipedia as “The process of building a scale model "from scratch", ie. from raw materials, rather than building it from [ ... ]

or why did I decide on Z-Scale model railroad.   

    I had been dabbling in N Gauge off and on since 1974, when I gave [ ... ]