I am in the process of moving into my first house. I have a small, portable N Scale layout. Some of the buildings are glued to it but some aren’t. What is the best way to pack the structures. Bubble wrap? Newspaper of packing peanuts? Some of the structures are plastic but others are laser-cut wood.
What do you mean by small and portable? And how are you moving?
If it’s a local move and you can fit the layout into something you can load and drive yourself, do that.
If you’re having a moving company do it, consider building a box around the whole thing to protect it. If none of those are reasonable options, I would carefully remove the structures, trees and such and just plan to re-attach them at the other end.
When I moved home from working overseas, I packed my buildings this way. First I cut pieces from wastebasket size trash bags, wrapped the building and sealed with tape. This would keep any small pieces that may fall off contained and not lost in the box. The packages were then put in boxes with lots of styro peanuts. also did this for vehicles that had small parts like mirrors that could fall off.
I have been selling off on eBay the old structures from my East Texas piney woods forest industries layout, that are not appropriate for my new Texas Gulf Coast island seaport layout.
NOT a commercial plug. My Lumberjack Cookhouse is already sold and gone…
This structure had a rooftop sign supposedly held in place by tension wires, represented by EZ Line. I found a cardbord box big enough for the structure, put scrap styrofoam 1-inch sheet, leftover from building layout surface , a piece cut to the size of the inside of the bottom of the box. Then I cut pieces to fit inside the sides of the box. These strengthen the box to resist crushing. Then I add more pieces of 1 inch styro cut to fit the shape of the structure, cutting out opening to avoid details but hold the structure FIRMLY in place inside the box, so it does not move around when box is shaken or stirred.
Similar technique used for Hervil’s Saw Shop,
Wayne Implements,
Wayne County jail et al. (Har har, this post gives me a chance to shamelessly show off stuff I don’t have anymore.)
Have arrived safely so far, thanks to the tender mercies of USPS and preventative packing.
I like the suggestion of putting them in a bag to catch parts that may go astray. I would suggest making some balls of newspaper to put inside the buildings (packing peanuts probably would work too if you kept it upside down until bagged), just to protect from cave ins.
For the ones with delicate signs, overhangs and the like, making an insert of foam to keep it snugly in place inside the box should work well.
My first moves, I was a little young to understand secure packaging. Later in life I didn’t always get to pack as changes occurred when I was off with Uncle Sam.
Good luck,
I pack a lot of my smaller structures in Ziplock gallon bags before I moved, then in peanuts. That way if something did break off, it stayed with the structure, not lost in the nuts![:D]