After almost 6 years of living my garage, my layout is starting to come down. The first loco my wife got for Christmas several years ago, an Atlas CSX Gp-38 made the final run around the layout Sunday. It seems sad putting all the rolling stock and engines away but hopefully soon they can run the rails again. We are going to list our house for sale in a couple months and I need to get the garage cleaned up and painted other than sky blue. One the requirements for the new house is either a basement or big enough garage area to put up a bigger and better layout. I am excited so I can fix some of my errors I learned from this layout.
I hear opportunity knocking. You’ve got the right attitude about things, so only good can come of this, despite it being the end of an era.[:)]
The question now is, did you design for ease of dis-assembly.
Most manufactured trackwork can be recycled if lifted carefully and cleaned up. If most of your present trackwork will end up in hidden staging, the cleanup can be minimal.
Buildings can be carefully lifted and packaged for shipment.
Scenery, including roadbed, is almost certain to be dumpster filler - but such things as trees can be savaged.
Whether or not benchwork components can be recycled depends on what kind of benchwork you built, how you assembled it and what materials you used. My steel stud L girder structure could be about 95% salvaged. A plywood tabletop gorilla-glued to a box frame structure…
Since your future layout space is still future probable, salvaging complete sections of your present layout for re-use is a ??? I build yard throats on sub-frames, to be removed as units - but that’s for ease of construction and maintenance. Their salvage value is dubious.
Having a complete layout in a garage would be distracting to potential homebuyers, but having neatly-stacked construction materials and a nice pile of sealed boxes shouldn’t detract from salability.
Been there, done that.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
I have saved all my turnouts, a good bit of the track has been saved as well for reuse as well as my building and trees. I am waivering over saving the plywood (it was the presswood type) but it might be worth spending the money for fresh realwood plywood to have a clean slate once I know how much space I have to work with.
Best wishes on a fast sale of your house so you can get your new layout up and going! True, sad to box them up it is, but think of it as giving them a well earned vacation. And when they return, they will have a bigger place to run! Good luck with finding a bigger train room too! Chin up mate, i too hear oppotunity knocking!
Cheers!
Save as much as possible, even a whole part of the layout if you can; you could integrate it in the new layout and what a memories.
Dick Elwells Hoosac valley is a wonderful example of a saved layout during a move.
My Maclau river in Nscale has moved 5 times and is still alive.
When I build it more than 30 years ago, I build it in a concept it can be moved.
Yes I must admit it’s not so easy as moving a bed or a table, but it can be moved any way.
Many people say " lessons learned " I will change this or that after a move.
I 'm okay whith this feeling but having saved Port Allen 5 times bring me so much pleasure and even if this part it’s not at the level how I accomplish models tomorrow; I am so happy to run train on this “old part of the layout”.
Now Port Allen is integrated in a big project, and had found a good place on the Maclau road.
The late John Allen do the same whith his first small Gorre and Daphetid.
The “Route of the Broadway LION” is the third layout that I built here in the monastery.
The first was the “Eastern Southwest North Dakota Central Railroad” Serving the middle of nowhere. That was built here in the basement of the monastery upon two ping pong tables in a room dedicated to “hobbies” but before that was the monastic refectory. That room was renovated and became our “Centenial” meeting room.
I found an underused classroom above the library, and built the “Eregion Railroad” after JRR Tolkien’s Middle Earth. It was a good layout, but got more and more troublesome over the years, and so I tore it down and built the “LION”. It is quit a bid bigger, and looks far more complicated, what with the big interlocking machine that I had built, but if the truth be told, I can runn 600 trains a day using only five of the 36 levers on the board. I have spent YEARS wiring this beast, and done yet I am not, for I am still installing the last of several hundred block signals. But what the heck, it IS a hobby, and I enjoy building th signals, so it is a win-win situation.
ROAR
Hate to throw cold water on your plans but finding a house that suits both you and the better half may involve some compromises. Usually the better half holds a trump card.
Good luck
Bob
Well, congrats on the house sale. I think.
Taking down a layout is hard to do. I have been struggling with that now. I WAS going to just expand it, but…not enough room…[:-^]
I built it to be small, lightweight {foam base over open grid}, and easy to handle. I did that on purpose as we,too, hope to move to a house sooner than later {from a trailer}.
I made the "toppings’ of the “table” to be easily de-assembled and re-assembled later.
I also look forward to not only correcting mistakes, but to build bigger, better, stronger, faster…
Good luck in your search and may you find the PERFECT MRRing space that happens to have a few BRs above it. and may your Other Half like it too.
[8-|]