America is a mobile society. I can’t speak for everyone, but during the last nearly 50 years, I’ve moved to dozens of places, many states and several countries. I feel that I’m settled down for now with my layout under construction but I never really thought of the D.C. area as my final resting place.
Thus, this undoubtedly will not be my final layout. Long-range plans, perhaps 10 years hence, I’d like to move into a large swath of wilderness, perhaps in Idaho or South Dakota, where my beagle can run free and where the final layout will be built before my final rest.
Perhaps unlike the Twin cities, DC area just doesn’t have the quality I like to think of as a hometown. Just a lot of busy commuters trying to make as much money as they can.
Looking forward to the progress of your layout (keep posting anything to whet our appetites). And lastly, do it right. It’s your final layout!!!
After you’re dead, you might still get a chance to build another layout in a new home up in the sky. A heavenly model railway. But the devil is in the details of what it will look like.
I understand what you are saying about that hometown feel of DC Dave. I would probably find it lacking too. Maybe that’s why I like it so much where I am. I live on the edge of the metro area. My home sits on 2.5 acres, which is the minimum lot size in the area. There is agriculture within a half a mile, but there are 3 cities within 5 miles. Just far enough away to be tranquil, and just close enough to be convenient.
I also have all the basement I need. Hang on, I’ll go snap a fresh shot of the progress.
Here is one from today. I just placed the track there to give everyone a better idea of what it will look like when it’s done.
i wish i had enough room to make any kind of a layout but im stuck here in an apartment …Ever since getting back into trains since my sons first xmas ive been dying to get out some glue and track and build something…
i have about enough room here to build a small Z scale layout
trust me, if it was up to me this place would have no doors and id be building a layout that ran conecting all the rooms. But alas, with a 4 month old son and my fiance(sp) here in this apartment, im simply just not allowed … lol, no love for the big kid [:D]
I’m thinking I’ll be here ten or so years, and if all goes well, we’ll head to somewhere in the Montana, Idaho, Dakotas region for the balance.
Or, we’ll stay here forever, but it’s one or the other. I’ve made my last Florida move.
As an aside, my Dad came home from WWII, bought a two lots for $50.00 each and built his house at night while he worked building his business during the day. He built that house pretty much singlehandedly and did every aspect of the work. He built with the money he sent home to my mother from teh war and never had a mortgage. He also never had a credit card.
He started building it in 1949 and moved in with my mother and sister in 1950.
and he died in that house 52 years later.
We had eight houses on our street and in the entirety of my lifetime, no one every moved. The people next door lived there when I was born and still do. Only when a neighbor on the other side died did a house on our street ever get sold to an “outsider”.
It was a different time, and a simpler time, and maybe a better time.
I think we are in our final home. The next one will have nurses and a big dining room. We are only 25 minutes from great entertainment, 15 minutes to malls, etc., yet we live in the timber with 5 acres and no neighbors. I do wish we had a bigger basement but I’m probably luckier than most.
Mom always said “be happy with what your have” and I am.
Jon
I think so, Dave, or rather I hope so. I’m not sure I’ll be able to afford the taxes on it in the future though. I have three children, age 14, 10 and 2 - so I hope we can be in this house for a while. It’s funny, after getting married, my wife and I drove out along the C&NW tracks until we got to a place where we could afford something and it was 46 miles out of the city - after 12 years, we moved a few blocks to a slightly larger home - with …ta da!.. a basement. Though it was only recently after taking a look around the space, I cleared off the crawlspace for a layout…
BTW, this is Suburbia with a capital ‘S’ - acres of farmland being transformed into thousands of similar-looking homes connected by overloaded roads lined with strip malls and the same five or six big-box stores every few miles. It used to be a town of about 20,000… but I’m not really complaining, no one forced me to move out here - I saw it coming…and it has the advantage of being a metro area of 8 million…
The new layout I’m constructing is in our new and final home. I can prove that by telling you that the cremated remains, and spirits, of our last two German Shephard dogs were ceremoniously released from their urns and sprinkled in the woods on our property. Part of the property is considered ‘wet lands’ and will be free and open in perpetuity.
BillFromWayne
I’m 18 and I don’t plan on living with my parents for the rest of my life, so I innevitably am going to be building a new layout someplace else in the future.
We’ll probably stay where we are. The areas we’d be interested in for retirement have become too high a cost of living. The only downside to where we are is the maintenance of 3 acres of lawn, I don’t worry about the woods.
It would be nice to have a basement rather than have my layout in a separate building, it discourages the impulse running of trains between TV programs of interest or killing other short stretches of time.
