My club had a sad and unusual thing happen last year- the trailer containing all of the modules for our 30 by 70 foot layout was stolen. I’ll bet not too many people can say that they have had an entire layout stolen.
The story can be found here.
WOnder if they knew what they were stealing or just wanted the trailer and dumped the contents?
“we can rebuild it…bigger, better, stronger, faster…for only Six Million Dollars…”
According to the officer who took the report, they’d been seeing a lot of cases where trailers were being stolen, then sold cheap to folks moving out of state. Since Michigan has permanent plates for the class of trailer we had, they wouldn’t need to change the plate once they’d gotten far enough away that nobody would recognize it. Since it was a plain vanilla trailer with no real identifying marks, it doesn’t really stand out.
We figure that the modules ended up in a ditch or a dumpster somewhere. Given the neighborhood it was stored in (with several machine shops), if the thieves were expecting anything inside, I’d bet it was machine tools.
As bad as it was to lose the thousands of hours of effort and thousands of dollars of investment, at least the DCC stuff was stored elsewhere, and nobody had their locos and rolling stock in the trailer.
What a bummer!
Glad to hear you have started a new layout.
If you get a chance, post some pictures.
Enjoy
Paul
That’s a real shame. I hope when the culprits are found, somebody breaks their fingers.
John
Sad that some people think they have to take other peoples things. In this case it was something that brought pleasure to so many as builders and as viewers.
Glad to here it didn’t keep the folks down, my best in their new efforts. I’d head for the show, but after buying a train ticket, I wouldn’t have enough left to buy much.
Best of luck to the group,
Sorry to here you lost an entire layout. That sucks.
There will always be someone out there that wants your stuff. Whether it’s a nice car, a stereo stystem, or now even a model railroad.
I’ve had my car stolen before with an expensive stereo system worth $3000. When they found the car is was on it’s axles, no wheels, no windows, no seats, nothing. The only thing they left was the engine. LOL
After that, I’ve never had another nice car with an expensive stereo.
This is very sad indeed!
Unfortunately, there will always be people with little to none respect for other people´s property and there is very little we can do about this, other than keeping a strict eye on our property.
I am glad to hear that your club has restarted its activity and that your members are building new modules!
It was maybe 3 years ago now, I had my Train Tool box stolen from my car behind work. I would have loved to seen the look on the thief face’s when they saw what was in the box.
Cuda Ken
Shoot back! When the risk gets too high, people of low character will be deterred from such behavior. As long as the risk is low, some will always engage in such behavior.
Any culture that values the bad people more than the good people is doomed to decline and colapse.
Sheldon
Sorry about your misfortune. But it reminds me of the old joke: An uneducated man can steal from a box car, but a man with an education can steal the whole railroad.
That is sad–I think that when the nimtwit who did this gets caught–like that’ll happen[:-^]–that he is kept behind bars and not released-----[:-^] I know–that is asking for too much[|(]
It is good that your club is restarting the project though[Y]