Can anyone give me suggestions as to the best way to move a present layout to our new home.
The layout itself is sectional, but I am concerned as to the best way to pack up and move buildngs,etc.
Any suggestions would be welcome.
Thanks
[#welcome]
I don’t have a layout, but I do move furniture for a living so maybe I can help. You said the layout is sectional that is good. Depending how large these sections are may make a difference. If you own a pickup truck (or rent one) you can store a full sheet of plywood lying flat (4x8 feet) in the bed of a long bed truck. If you are renting a U Haul truck or something similar, then it would be better. Because the U Haul truck is covered. The key is keep the sections flats as possible. It is also a good idea not to stack the sections of course. You may want to purchase some plastic drop cloths at a hardware store to protect the scenery during transit. You may want to purchase some bubble wrap that will help protect some things.
You may want to remove the structures, vehicles, maybe trees, and other details. I don’t know how far you are moving but these tips may help.
As far as locomotives and rolling stock, it is best to use the original boxes that these came in.
Hope this helps and good luck moving.
For your structures, I’d gently ball up some newspaper and stuff it into each one, then use more balled newspaper for packing between them in a good solid cardboard box. Don’t make the balls to hard. If you have fine details on the exterrior of the buildings you may want to remove it if you can or put them in small box so they can be held in position by paper wads not touching the detail.
Good luck,
Hi from Belgium,
The suggestions posted are very good, another one is may be reinforce temporarily the frame of the sectional part, to avoid as far as possible any distorsion of the layout and the scenery which could cause craks or breaking of some structures or track.
A lot of us are obliged by the way of today live to move one day or another.
Many of us would preserve their layout and move whith it. Anyway move a scenicked layout is not a easy task and oblige you to demolish some part of it.
I never see any approach of it in the magazines, but a good suggestion for layout contruction, will be to construct them sectional and on a rigid frame.
Using a rigid frame allow us to be ready for a future move and we could bigger sectionsof the layout whithout to much disturbing the already construction.
My own layout is on the way of a move in the next coming months and it’s not it’s first one.
Its a big piece to move, 5 feet by 8 feet completely sceniked and in a nearly finished state. It reach a nearly 120kg!
I use open grid wood construction and after the first move I noticied some craks and distorsion of the structural wood of the layout.
So, I made a rigid frame of steel and bolted the whole layout on it. The frame is made from 2.5"/2.5"/0.1" square steel tubes, soldered togheter whith a few crossing to make it more rigid.
Some of us will say I can"t solder steel tube,but you cand made a frame of bolted steel also.
Steel is cheap and very rigid; in a tube configuration is not so heavy; you can drill it and bolted it.
My layout in his rigid frame configuration has moved three times whithout any distortion of the wood structure and more im
It’s a lot of work no matter what. I’ve always wrapped rolling stock and buildings separately from the layout - in original boxes if I have them and they fit. Otherwise, wrap item loosely in tissue paper (not tissues because they disintegrate too easily) and place in box with styrofoam peanuts is the ultimate. If there is room, multiple items can fit in one box. Bubble wrap and similar are faster, but don’t protect as well as a bed of peanuts. One thing to watch for with peanuts is to fill the box sufficiently so heavier items can’t easily worm their way to the bottom of the box and get damaged when the box gets thrown around.
In one of many taxpayer-sponsored moves, the mover suggested enclosing the layout section using mattress boxes. That worked enough better than anything short of building my own crate that I deliberately started sizing layout sections to fit mattress cartons from then on. Building my own crate would have been ideal, but I would have sacrificed layout building time to do it. Everything is always a jam time-wise as moving day approaches - just getting the buildings and rolling stock properly packed was more than I had time for.
I also found out that if your paid-for move uses the wooden crates (typical for overseas military moves) that these are about 95" on the inside - not 96". When my layout section was 96" long, it had to go into the crate at an angle - which was a recipe for damage as the movers filled in the crate around the layout.
The worst part is that I can count on two fingers (out of 14 moves) the number of times the old layout would fit in the designated space in the new house without sub