The analogies I've heard are that a capacitor is like a rubber membrane in line with the water pipe, and that an inductor is like a flywheel being driven by a turbine.
I guess a transistor is a little man twiddling a valve according to a dial in the "water model" of electricity, any through-space effects are due to leaks, and nonlinear components like MOSFETs are a bit more creatively explained. (E.g. Source: water reservoir; drain: water reservoir; gate: gate between source and drain reservoirs, driven by an utterly mad person who follows interesting rules. Oh, and inexplicably he's a bit stronger than transistor man too).