Today was a sad day as I had to completely tear down my model railroad. Now keep in mind, it was all made to be torn down - the platform was modular and no track was nailed down. Oddly enough I didn’t have very many derailments at all. At any respect, I ran the last engine, a Bowser M1 with a Pennsy N5C caboose as an final “inspection” of the entire layout. It wasn’t anything complex - essentially 3 loops, 2 of them having sidings so I could run either a passenger or freight train on that “main line”. One of the loops was elevated so I could have some mountains and tunnels. But the bigger sadness in the whole thing is that the layout was a major bonding time for my son and I. He is 2 1/2 now, so he doesn’t quite understand why I took it down. He was holding on to his old Bachmann UP F7 with a death grip all day saying that he was keeping it. Even though that wasn’t the most awesome layout I ever had, it was by far the most fun because of that time we spent together with it. It was essentially a large U that was 14 x 14. And yes, I let him keep the old F7.
But even with the sadness of having packed everything away in a storage unit there is a very large silver lining. Once we sell our current house we’ll be moving into a MUCH larger place with some really interesting options for a model railroad (the attic there is gigantic and there it at least twice the space we have now, but it is broken up into two rooms) And the good thing is that my son is absolutely obsessed with trains, so there is no doubt he’ll be asking me to put 'em back up once we move in. I guess we’ll just have to watch some of the DVD’s we have in the mean time.
Thanks to a military career, been there, done that, have the T-shirt.[|(]
By the time I could finally build a layout with a half-life longer than that of Francium my son had discovered sports (star football player, later mini-tour golfer) and girls.[:-^]
Can’t tell about the one grandson. He’s a follower of Dennis the Menace, and isn’t particularly welcome in my layout space. He also lives half a continent away.[sigh]
I have hopes for the great-grandsons, but they’re toddlers now and also live a long way from here. For the moment, they like playing with their mother’s collection of fire trucks. We shall see[^o)]
Well, it could be a lot sadder–like having to give it all up headed for the nursing home or having been foreclosed on.,… Some model railroaders face that reality. Me, I would just like to die in my sleep when I get old and have the trains mysteriously start on their own when someone comes down to the basement to tear everything up!
At least you have the silver lining of a larger space for a larger layout ahead you can build during years he is more likely to treasure time with his dad.
{Until he becomes a teenager, wants absolute independence and autonomy from the “parental units”, discovers fast cars and even faster girls and drops out of the hobby as life takes over till 20-something years later when he takes it up again, [:-^]}
Look forward to unpacking the boxes. It will be like Christmas, regardless of what month you get to do it. I packed my trains away and opened them up again 35 or 40 years later. If an old guy like me got that excited opening up old boxes with stuff I knew was in there, imagine what fun a young boy will have.
You’ll also have the fun of building a new layout, this time with some help. I think your silver lining is more like platinum. Or maybe nickel-silver.
Always sad to take a layout down, even when a new, better one is in the immediate works, there are memories and lessons learned.
Maybe you should get a loop of track out to keep the young engineer in pratice.
DVD’s, both of trains and How To’s are good. You will also have some time to read, don’t know if he’ll be ready to listen, but sometimes Dad’s voice is all that’s needed.
Good luck in the new place. Hope you can get in soon.
Mine is built to be taken apart as well. You could always get a wood door at Home Depot and build a little layout on that until you can reassemble your old one. You could store it under your son’s bed, he would probably like that.
Not really so sad. I was asked to move out of my house 10 years ago and tear down my almost built layout. That was followed by a lengthy seperation and finally divorce. I have had no place to run trains since then. At least you have something to look forward to, a new house and a place to run your trains in the near future. I don’t see any chance of running my trains for a while yet. Economy, low paying job in a city with high priced houses (northern Virginia). You chould be happy and count your blessings.
I agree that it’s not so sad in the long run. At 2 1/2 your Son won’t remember the original layout. He’s most likely to start remembering things like that in a couple of years. He probably won’t appreciate the building process which will give you some time to set up and let him start having fun.
I think like Mr Beasly.When you unpack your trains later it will be like xmas when you were young.I had my trains and stuff packed up for 12 years while I did other hobbies.Then one day last summer the family and grandkids and I were watching a old VHS tape I made of my layout back in the 90’s.They ask what happen to the trains and I said I still have all packed away.The light bulb in my head went off and since then we have been working on a new layout and having a blast.So you might be sad today but later you will be very happy.BOB
Joe- I share your grief. Having moved twice the hardest thing to do with the very first layout was to take a saw to it- nothing could be recovered. I have pictures.
The next layout had the same fate- I had to remove it to make my basement “sell-able” with the house. Bummer looking at all of the boxes.
Present house- finally found a living space to keep the rain off of the layout, and the biggest selling point of the home was a unfinished portion of the lower level. Created a frankenstein in the unfinished place and desired to finish the room off, so I destroyed the efforts, sheetrocked the walls and finished the space off. After moving an aunt to senior housing I was full of extra furniture and decided to set up a bedroom in my space that was intended for a railroad. Another bummer.
At last I booted the furniture, created benchwork and viola- a train room was born.