Today my layout was dismantled and removed from my house. The new buyer will possibly reassemble most of the layout and is moving it approx 1000 kms away. I was touched with a tinge of sadness as Charles drove away but now its time to continue planning on the new HO layout. The N scale layout was 17 years old and has provided a lot of fun and lreaning. I have used it as a backdrop for approx 5 NSR articles as well as many threads here on trainboard.
It is hard to see a favorite layout finally go. It's also interesting to see the pullback and reveal photos of disassembly, and we can now see how you did the magic. Great job, good luck on the HO!
Paul, It looks like your layout will get a nice new home just like the WP F3's that my grandson was running yesterday.
Just a few thoughts and good wishes First, your layout appeared to be quite an achievement and was very beautiful. Next, be very thankful and appreciative that you were able to sell it, as down here in SoFla so many classic layouts are dismantled simply because they just weren't sold, including mine. I gave mine away rather than to dismantle it. It is still active which gives me some appreciation myself. Third, I can appreciate your move to HO, as I am a passionate N scale modeler, but look at myself as an even more passionate model railroader, and I built HO and Z layouts when the need to stray once in awhile and/or when I am stale at my modeling endeavors, I go to these scales and even sometimes model car building. Every hobby is the same but different enough to keep the blood in the veins fresh. My point is this--try to keep a small stable of locos and rolling stock, and a simple loop/turnout or floor layout handy, for those times when you miss N, and believe me, you will. By eliminating the "way too small" aspect of the hobby, you will long to run trains more. A close friend of mine just made the move a few months ago, and today at breakfast at the diner, he offered to buy the very items I mentioned above. I ended up selling him some old Bachmann diesels and old rolling stock and he was delighted even though the trains were not state of the art. Ken "FloridaBoy" Willaman
Sad to see it go, but good that it will live again in some form. Now you can wholly concentrate on the future HO switching layout, which I am sure will give you many enjoyable hours both in the construction and the operation.
Paul, Would love to see some photos of those F3's, I have seen a few posts here and there that feature some of my roster. Backshop, There are a few reasons I changed scales, firstly I am moving home so the layout had to go. My modelling had changed over the years to detailing locos and i wanted switching rather than continuous running. Also DCC with sound was the final contributing factor and to retrofit 80 locos which were not DCC ready would have been too time consuming and costly so I sold everything other than around 12 prized locos . This has been able to fund locos, rollingstock, DCC and design of the new layout Ken, You are so correct in what you say, it wasnt the $$ value of selling the layout i was just happy for someone to remove it and possibly rebuild it. If it had not been sold it would have been demolished.
Looks like it is going to a good home, if someone spends the time and effort to dismantle it and move it that far you can bet they appreciate it, I doubt that it will sit too long before it is being rebuilt. I just demolished mine few months back and that is no fun. looking forward to see the HO when you get going on it.
