I said that this would be the year that I started to build a layout. Today I actually took the first step! (Those of you who have been holding your breath in anticipation will have suffocated long ago!)
Today my son Cole and I filled a 10 cubic yard waste bin with 20+ years of accumulated junk from the garage!
I have to explain the amount of junk (meaning I have to blame somebody else). My beloved parents were Depression Era children They were taught that everything had a use. Nothing got thrown out. Up until today I have followed that mantra faithfully. How many of you were told “Don’t throw that out! It will come in handy some day”! You can’t imagine what came out of their house when they sold, or then again those of you who have been through it probably can.
Actually I have to give most of the credit to my son Cole. I had been talking about cleaning out the garage but he started on his own on Sunday afternoon, allegedly because he did not have enough room to use his punching bag. Please take note - when Cole decides to clean something up there must be some serious issues at play!
Then next thing that needs to be done is to organize what is left into 1/3 of a 2 1/2 car garage. I may have to give up my beloved Radial Arm saw that has built so many things I can’t remember, but a compound mitre saw takes up a whole lot less space, and is portable to boot. There is also a bit of a mice issue thanks to my sloppy storage of sunflower seeds for the birds. Don’t ask!
Anyhow, wish me luck, and please collectively kick my butt if it takes me another 10 years to construct benchwork, which it won’t.
Congrats on taking that step! Very smart move as the “Don’t throw it out” mindset can be taken to an extreme and in many cases leads to a MASSIVE amount of clutter and a potential unsanitary insect / rodent haven and fire trap.
I had a clutter issue some years back. Realizing that I was slowly turning into a hoarder, I followed the advice of a colleague in that, except for tools and a minimal amount of building materials, if the items in your garage or hobby room are not going to be used…get rid of them! If you need an item later, suck it up and buy it when you do need it as, in most cases, it won’t cost a fortune!
Once you start on the actual layout, take photos as you progress and when you get to a comfortable stage post them here. Do you have a track plan, era, and theme? Will the layout be shelf style, island, multi-deck, or a combination?
Try living in a trailer with NO basement, NO 2 1/2 car Garage and only a storage shed {8by12} and an “enclosed porch {7 x 30}” to store “schtuff”. We have way too much, and will havet o get busy cleaning out soon! {we can’t move in either}
My parents never threw anything out as my mother often thought she could use somehting for "crafts projects’ so we saved things like : paper egg cartons, foam egg cartons, foam meat trays, toilet paper tubes, paper towel tubes, etc etc.
While my mtoher passed away and I hauled a lot of “schunk {schtuff and junk}” out like that , my father is just as guilty.
He has about 6 or 8 monitors for the first IBM computer he bought when he worked for the company to the present day, all in various working orders! He has 6 dead TVs { the big old cabinet styles} to yet get rid of.
The problem is his area doesn’t have curbside pick up as the landfill transfer station is nearby. It costs to unload monitors and TVs , so he figures let me and my brother take care of it when we inherit the house!
GOod luck on your efforts to clean outhe rest of hte garage…Now to only make sure it doesn’nt GET FILLED AGAIN!!!
Was bought up in the same manner so feel your pain, the only problem seems to be that when I grit my teeth and actually throw something out I’ve kept for years without using,I always seem to need it within the next week or so." C’est la vie!"
The day I backed my truck up the driveway loaded up with 1"x 4"s for the layout I was beaming. Getting the room clear is always a tough job. When my mother died, not only did we have her stuff but all the stuff she had from Grandparents, aunts etc. Long story on how it got to our house in the first place.
Every Sunday my sister comes down for dinner. Each Sunday I had a pile of junk by the front door. She either put it in her car and took it home or it went in the garbage or to the Sally Ann the next day. The only down side, as my brother in law so kindly reminded me of, was that being the executer of her estate, I was likely going to have to get rid of it all over again someday.[sigh]
Here my first bench gets up on its legs for the first time. Soon to be carried around the house into the trainroom where leg supports will make it solid. Note all the supervisors in the dog run behind. To the left they have a doggy door that takes them out to a one acre yard to run around in. But the train table attraction is too much to ignore.[&]
AntonioFP45: Thank you for your response. You are right on - I had the rodent thing/fire trap down pat.
I do have a layout plan that I have spent countless hours refining using 3rdPlanIt and much sage advise from these forums. It is set in the late 50’s and it is best described as a ‘loop to loop’ with a small yard, locomotive service facility and several switching opportunities. I also have a small HOn30 mine loop where the critter in my avatar will find a home. The layout will be DCC with as much sound as possible (read affordable) and the primary railroad will be Canadian Pacific. I am going to take some liberties with the use of the CP script logos just because I find them so attractive, despite the fact that they didn’t appear on the prototype until the early 60’s, or so I understand.
The bench work looks good, and I am sure the canines agree.
I know exactly what you mean when you talk about stuff that has been saved by former generations. I could go on forever about what we threw out from my parent’s home. In fact, having been through the countless hours and effort required to clean their stuff up, I think it is theraputic to talk about it. Just don’t make the mistake I did about telling them what was tossed![(-D]
Your further along than I am…lol I’m just in the planning stage, I live in an apt. (luckily it’s a pretty decent size apt.) I’ve been thinking about starting an N-Scale layout “soon”…I’ve been saying soon since we moved in (3 1/2yrs ago!) I had planned on buying some benchwork but have decided to make my own, hopefully I’ll start that in the next couple weeks or so. I changed what i was planning on…i was gonna go with a 10ft layout x 3ft wide with a small L type extension. Measured my space earlier today and have decided to go with a 3ft x 12ft, it’ll fit better with the room it’s going in. I’ll be sure to let everyone know when i start building it…lol
3 ft x 12 ft sounds great as long as you can get at both sides. Why not show us a layout plan with the room outlined as well. I got advise on these forums that saved me from making some pretty dumb mistakes and my layout plan is much the better for it.
Well Dave, glad to here you made some headway! I don’t have the problem of saving stuff I don’t need as a whole. About once a year I go through the garage / train room and toss stuff I don’t feel I need. Rule of thumb is if I don’t use it once in a year, I don’t need it and it finds a new home or heads to the curb.
Funny part is my wife will get up set when I get rid of something that is mine? And yes, she does not throw away anything.
One of the things that has stopped me from building my dream layout is I have to tear down my current 174 square foot layout. I think I would be going through train withdraws to long.[:-^]
