All service on the N scale Pennsylvania Railroad Middle Division has been suspended until further notice.
We regret any inconvenience this may cause our freight customers and the traveling public.
On 21 April 2008, the last trains to traverse the N scale PRR consisted of eastbound Altoona to Enola local M16 and westbound TrucTrain TT1. After that all power, control, and signal control systems were disconnected.
In answer to the rumors that this service suspension is related to recent sightings of Penn Central and Conrail equipment, the management replies with an emphatic “no.”
[:D]
…I’ll be putting my house on the market May 1st in preperation for my move this summer to Nebraska on Air Force orders. As such, having the layout set up not only makes the bonus room look smaller, but also invites sticky fingers to mess with things I don’t want messed with.
So this weekend the layout is going out to the garage where it will be entombed in its plywood crate, to await its re-awakening sometime late this summer in the Omaha area (hopefully in the basement of a nice house).
I’m sad, of course, but at least I know the layout isn’t headed for the dumpster.
As a bonus, I’m planning on writing an article about how the move goes (assuming it goes as well as last time) for one of the N scale pubs. So I’m photo-documenting the process. I figure I’m not the only guy who moves a lot and who has a portable layout.
So long for now, Pennsy… We’ll see you again soon!
Stay strong there Dave, it wll be tough but you can do it, and did’nt i read that you were going to be defending your thesis soon also?, good luck with all that!, stay in touch on here if you can.
Dave good luck with the move, I’ve been real lucky with 3 units back to back where I didn’t have to move especially with this housing market slump we are in. Sounds crazy, but hopefully I don’t make E7 too fast where I have to move. Again good luck.
There’s been many times that I’ve done the same thing as well Dave. My layout has been across the country and back and in the last 5 yrs. it has seen three different states with different weather conditions.
When you get to run that first train after a move is such a great feeling and the whole family comes running to see it. [8D]
There is some pretty good railfanning out Omaha way, Dave, so look upon that as a consolation. In fact you would now be within drivable distance of Milwaukee’s Trainfest and Galesburg’s Railroad Days, not to mention many model railroad and railfan events in Iowa and Missouri.
Ahh I remember those times with mixed feelings. Having to pull up stakes again and move to another school on the other side of the world. Gosh I miss portions of it. I don’t miss having to tear down the layout, or packing it away again or having to go with mom and dad as we look for a new house or having to watch the movers pack the vans and be a gopher for them.
We never made it to Nebraska, Army Signal Corps wouldn’t have, but I can’t say that I envy you. I had friends in Manhatten Kansas, so while at least you are in a larger metropolitan area, you still have to deal with the plains. Good luck with that.
Seriously best o’luck in Omaha. Which base is that?
Thanks, everyone. I moved to North Carolina from Florida with a door layout based on Atlas’ Scenic & Relaxed… The movers, under government contract, moved it without disturbing a single tree. That layout was later canabalized to provide trees, structures, signals, etc. for my current door layout. The plywood box remains the same.
I hope they’re equally successful this time.
Oh, the base is Offutt AFB in Bellevue, NE (just south of Omaha).
Most people remember Offutt as HQ, Strategic Air Command (now it’s the joint USSTRATCOM), but I’ll be working at HQ, Air Force Weather Agency as a branch chief in the weather modeling section.
In other news, I’m putting the finishing touches on draft 1 of my PhD dissertation. My advisor wanted less that 200 pages; I managed to squeak in at 195. It’s pretty hard to sum up three years’ of work into less than 200 pages. It’s even harder to summarize it in the 1 hour they give you for your dissertation defense. You have one hour to speak, that is… They have all the time in the world to slap you around![:-^]
When I retired from my oil company job in Saudi Arabia a few years ago, I had a bedroom sized layout that I shipped back home. I removed all the trees, buildings, rolling stock, and benchwork legs. These were packed them separately. I had to cut the benchwork into 2 pieces so it would fit the shipping container. It made a crossing to Baltimore on a container ship in December (stormy time), then by truck to Maine, into storage, then out a couple months later when my house was ready for my household goods. It arrived undammaged. The only major problem I had was when I assembled the benchwork, I forgot to allow for the width of the saber saw blade. My river was a saw blade thickness narrower than before, and I had to trim bridge abutments so 2 bridges would fit.
I have always been nervous about the movers taking my modelling stuff, so that is one of the reasons we have been doing partial DITYs up until this point. I think next time we PCS, I am going to let them deal with it since it sounds like you have had good luck (if we CONUS to CONUS again). I have had some stuff come up missing in the past, and that kind of scares me.
The items that went in boxes, I packed. I put all buildings, rolling stock and most vehicles in cut up plastic garbage bags. I taped the cut down bags so they fit closely to the item, and marked the bag with what the item was. That way is any parts fell off they would be in the bag. The bagged items were boxed and padded with styrofoam peanuts.
I keep my locomotive original boxes. Scenery items, decals, detail parts, tools and other modeling supplies were packed in ziplock bags.
I left the boxes open for the mover to inspect and seal. That way they were listed as packed by mover instead of packed by owner, i.e. covered by moving insurance for what that is worth.
The mover used a lot of cardboard and bubble wrap to pad the layout pieces. I also numbered each benchwork leg so I could install it back in the place it was removed from.
***Dave, the PRR with continue to provide inspiration for many of us through your website, even if temporarily packed away. Best of luck with your move and “Thank You for Serving”. [C):-)][tup] Rob
Hey Dave let me know if my friend and I can help you with your dissertation commitee, you know sort of in an advocacy capacity!, always willing to help out a fellow N-Scaler[:D]
