my girlfriends mother has a N scale setup i would like to have. it has a smaller tunnel, waterfall, roundhouse and 2 sheds for it along with other things. problem with the setup is it wasnt designed to be torn down unless the scenery gets cut. it is roughly 14 feet long by 3 feet deep.
Very nice… Bring on more pics.
Mike
Great setup, and it looks well done. Think you could cut it and get it out without causing terminal damage?
the problem about cutting it is the backdrop how it is raised track along the cliff is foam and much of the rest would need cut by razor knife to piece it together again. girlfriends mom says she has no use for it and would sell to me for $1500. though i think $1000 would be more reasonable since i would have to get things separated and figure out all the wiring for all the track switches, lighting, and other electrical stuff. my girlfriend says she wouldnt mind having the setup, but we have no room unless i set it up in basement or in garage. basement would be too much of a pain since it can get 15 inches of water since we are low area close to Missouri River. when water table goes up, so does water in basement. garage would be a good place for the setup since i am sectioning off a side of it that used to be parking stall as a werk area. just right now, funds arent gonna allow me since my car just had an issue today and looking for a job. seems things never werk out as planned. i might end up getting some cars and locomotives and start my own layout with stuff she will sell me. she is only asking like $5-$10 each piece. she has lots of stuff that would go with the layout if sold also. here is a link of all pictures i took of her layout and pieces she has. there was stuff i didnt have chance to take pictures of, but i can say she has it and no need for it.
http://s48.photobucket.com/albums/f234/Nebraskachickenfarmer/train%20stuff%20for%20sale/
87 Crown Vic, one solution for you is to buy the house from your girlfreind mom and layout as is yours. Is this an option for you?
my girlfriend would love to buy home from her mom, but it is in a unfriendly type neighborhood in the city. i myself prefer the country living and girlfriend has grown to living in the country. last thing we need is our cars getting broke into or stolen and kids getting shot. the kind of neighborhood that my girlfriend’s mother lives in, our cars wouldnt last the nite. we have the big cars that are preferred. i have a pair of 1987 2 door Crown Victorias, a 1987 sedan Grand Marquis, girlfriend has a 1989 Crown Victoria, and her son has a car i gave him which is a 1986 converted to 1987 engine setup Grand Marquis. my girlfriend’s mother is behind on taxes and reason why she wants to sell me the layout. i wouldnt mind the layout to put in my garage since that is my play area, BUT i have been thinking of getting int garden scale.
Oh hooooooooooo the pain. I looked the pics on the link and I would love snatch up at least 90% of the cars and number of the motive power, but alas I would need the lottery to be big and bank I would have to rob have a lot of cash on hand. Ooooooh the torture. And a 2 door vic? That doesn’t sound right. I remember my dads '89 Grand Marque. Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh. I still don’t think he knows why the rear tires wore out so quickly [:-,][:-,]. I had the chance to buy it from him but passed. At that point I moved to the ‘big city’ and didn’t want a big car. Instead I bought a new car which got repo’d a year latter because I lost the job I had. Now of course I realized just how cool that ol ‘GM’ was and wish I would have taken it. Instead it went to a family that had 3 kids all learning how to drive at the same time. Needless to say it was beat up a bit. The needed two cars for the 3 kids so they ended up getting a newer Chrysler and then both boys signed up for the Army and were gone for boot camp and all that so I don’t know what happened to the car. As far as I know they sold it off and it’s still out there running around. I know it was a Ford, but I still kind of miss that little 5 liter. That was the one nice thing Ford did, they used the same 5.0L as the Mustangs for the larger cars like the Marques and Vics, but never detunned them like GM did. The 5.7’s in the Camaro/Firebirds is the same LS1 as in the Corvettes but they detunned them from 345hp down to about 305 in the earlier years and then bumped it up to 315 for the last few years of F-body production. Er, sorry, last few years of the Camaro/Firebird production. In case anyone cares Corvettes were called Y-body’s. I’m full of what most people would consider useless information. Just don’t run into many people anymore who would enjoy listening to me explain how the transmission from the Viper was changed around to be used in the Camaro/Firebird and how it was then modified to work in the Corvette. For that matter I have yet to run
OK as I see it,you got 5 cars between you?
Sell 4 and buy the models with the proceeds-no problem!
Why would you want 5 cars anyway,must cost a bomb to run them even with the cheap gas you get in the states[;)]
Steve
Looks like a nice model railroad, and plenty of trains for it as well! [:D]
I say buy the layout with whatever cash you can raise, beg or borrow.
Can you pass the layout out of the house through a window to get it out in one piece?? No problem moving it into your garage in one piece.
Good luck with it, it is a great layout!!
George
Experience tells me she will never get $1,500, or $1,000 for it.
She may get the value of the locos and rolling stock, if she’s lucky.
Just wait until she finds out it won’t sell and then offer to take it off her hands for nothing.
MILW-RODR -
I actually find that info sort of interesting. From my younger days (1960s) I remember the Chevy close ratio 4-speed was a much sweeter shifting tranny than the wide ratio version. But tell me this: Lately I’ve noticed the 1987 +/- Crown Vic has had a resurgence in popularity. But why? They were okay cars (as long as you didn’t mind planning far ahead to turn a corner), but nothing special that I could see. What’s the appeal?
They are actual cars, with frames, room inside, voluminous trunks, and rear wheel drive, which holds up better, can be used for towing, etc. Fairly easy to work on. Could have cop tires, cop brakes, cop suspension. 
I had '86, '88, & '90 Crown Vics. Now I could put collector plates on the older ones, if I still had them.[:(] The newest ones are built on nearly the same frame. The Crown Vic and Mustang and truck 302s are all different. A Mustang 302 could be placed in a Vic, but the computer would need some upgrades. The camshaft out of a truck is a nice upgrade for a Vic.
2-doors lasted until the '88 body style change. Wagons ended in '91. The wagons would hold 4x8 sheets of material. Wish I could have found one…
You could buy a lot of new track and new trains with $1000-1500.
This layout is a but dated in its design and operating potential.
The engines would be nice to have, though.
I just said the engine. Obviously a low torque engine from a 3000lb sports car isn’t going to do as great for a 4000lb family sedan. And the only thing special about cop car tires is they use H-rated tires, and that’s only a modern thing. Back in the old days what seperated your car from the cops car was the paint job and the flashy lights. Starting in the 80’s is when they started to make them different, and even it isn’t much. What makes a last generation Crown Vic cop car different from your grandpa’s 2000 crowny? Besides the obvious, the H-rate tires, slightly different electronics to make all the lights flash, the addition of a power steering cooler, and a heavy-duty transcooler, which if I remember right wasn’t anything special itself, it was just a transcooler from a truck instead of a car. As for the resurgance, with the gas prices the way they are going up and down all the time I couldn’t tell you why. Their is a kind of dumb trend going through the auto world right that takes older full size cars and modys them to fit typically 22-26 inch truck tires/wheels, but they people who do that (I won’t say because then I will be called racist and I’m not) usually stick with older cars, like late 70’s to late 80’s. LTD’s, Capris’s, Impala’s, Cutlass’, Regals’, Monte Carlo’s, cars like that. I will have to admit I suckered into this trend a tad and modified a 1/18 die cast '55 Chevy to fit a whomping sound system with a trunk full of speakers, usuall dozen speakers in the cab and a few monitors, and added a set of 30 inch truck wheels/tires. I didn’t mess with the plastic suspenion height so it would be stock height which made it look better. Ever seen a '70 Cutlass 4-4-2 convertible jacked up 6 inches in the air and waring 24 inch wheels? It looks pretty stupid, eeeespecially with a '70 4-4-2 rag top. I also bought a 1/25 Monte that could be made in the style, but it ended up getting stepped on and the roof crushed in so now when I get around to it I plan using the '57 chevy custom dragster ki
[quote user=“MILW-RODR”]
I just said the engine. Obviously a low torque engine from a 3000lb sports car isn’t going to do as great for a 4000lb family sedan. And the only thing special about cop car tires is they use H-rated tires, and that’s only a modern thing. Back in the old days what seperated your car from the cops car was the paint job and the flashy lights. Starting in the 80’s is when they started to make them different, and even it isn’t much. What makes a last generation Crown Vic cop car different from your grandpa’s 2000 crowny? Besides the obvious, the H-rate tires, slightly different electronics to make all the lights flash, the addition of a power steering cooler, and a heavy-duty transcooler, which if I remember right wasn’t anything special itself, it was just a transcooler from a truck instead of a car. As for the resurgance, with the gas prices the way they are going up and down all the time I couldn’t tell you why. Their is a kind of dumb trend going through the auto world right that takes older full size cars and modys them to fit typically 22-26 inch truck tires/wheels, but they people who do that (I won’t say because then I will be called racist and I’m not) usually stick with older cars, like late 70’s to late 80’s. LTD’s, Capris’s, Impala’s, Cutlass’, Regals’, Monte Carlo’s, cars like that. I will have to admit I suckered into this trend a tad and modified a 1/18 die cast '55 Chevy to fit a whomping sound system with a trunk full of speakers, usuall dozen speakers in the cab and a few monitors, and added a set of 30 inch truck wheels/tires. I didn’t mess with the plastic suspenion height so it would be stock height which made it look better. Ever seen a '70 Cutlass 4-4-2 convertible jacked up 6 inches in the air and waring 24 inch wheels? It looks pretty stupid, eeeespecially with a '70 4-4-2 rag top. I also bought a 1/25 Monte that could be made in the style, but it ended up getting stepped on and the roof crushed in so now when I get around to it I plan using the '57 chevy cus
Because Crown Vics may have been hauled around on RR auto cars, the “Ghost” could easily be given to someone who models in large scale for a scene, and someone asked me a question in a previous post, I had to answer. Still don’t think it relates? How about this:
I model in N scale so it would be more difficult, easier in larger scales, but if you get a hold of the '78 Ford Fairmont that is usually scene for RR model vehicles it could fairly easily modeled to took like the older LTD/Crown Victories. If you model in the 80’s a new nose might have to crafted and grafted on, but the body would be similar. After all this talk I think it would be neat to see someone model a Crowny. It could be placed in the employee parking lot of your yard Packer dude. Maybe even paint on like a Packer bumper sticker, make them a Packer fan. On at least one of my locos I plan having it painted in a special Green and Gold paint scheme. Maybe check to see if it is in a time era when Packers were celebrating an anniversary.
And now back to the ‘non’ related post, I did forget to mention in my last post that the Packers were always Acme Packers. They weren’t around when it was called India Packers. If I remember right the team started to form when it was still India, but wasn’t famous or Pro untill after India Packers was sold and renamed Acme Packers. This was all way back in early 1900’s though. 60-70 years before my time.
I model in N-Scale too but I haven’t gotten around to vehicles for the layout yet other than some N-Scale school busses. I do current era modeling some anything before 1980 wouldn’t be common on the layout except for junkers. To bad there aren’t alot of prototype N-Scale versions of these cars you are talking about. I personally would love to see an N-Scale version of my 2007 Impala on the layoyt but they don’t make any as far as I know.
I only drove one Ford in my life. My father had a 1959 Ford Galaxie that I drove for a while and then got stolen. It was nice car but i didn’t like it that much since it was hardtop. That was replaced by 1963 Pontiac Grand Prix which I loved to drive.That one didn’t have air conditioning but boy was it built.
Irv
The layout’s only 14’ long? Just put it in the back seat of the Crown Vic![:D]
Honestly, what I would do is offer her the $1,000, then strip the layout and rebuild it at your house. If it’s been sitting for a long time, odds are it has problems cropping up from years of dirt, corrosion, expansion/contraction etc.
I would remove all the track, then carefully cut the table into at least two sections.
If you really like the track plan, you could simply re-assemble it as it is, then carefully relay the track, or replace it with something better like Atlas Code 55. You would also have the opportunity to correct any track plan problems it might have by changing a grade or an alignment, or by replacing the old Atlas bridges with something a little more realistic.
Or, it’s possible that you don’t have room to set it back up as is, and will have to reconfigure the layout to fit your space. In that case, just strip it all the way down to components, and start from scratch. Foam is foam, it can be cut and re worked, and you can probably build a new improved layout having to purchase only some cork roadbed, recycling everying else.
Don’t end up handcuffing yourself to somebody else’s plan. An old carpenter once told me “If someone put it together, someone else can take it apart!”
Good luck with that…
Lee
Then there’s little point in paying $1,000 for used layout materials, especially older stuff like what’s pictured. You could get new and better track, for example, with that same money.
