Our museum is always willing to accept donations in all scales. And becuase we are a 501c3 non-profit, all donations are tax deductable.
In my experance, the layout (track) will be hard to save, as most likely, most of it has been hand laid, but if she wishes to donate the building and any extra, we sure could use them.
Please contact me at wrmrrm@sbcglobal.net
I am a person with a very active inner child. This is why my wife loves me so. Willoughby, Ohio - the home of the CP & E RR. OTTS Founder www.spankybird.shutterfly.com
nope none yet
I took apart a 2 rail layout about 7 years ago. Benchwork and most of the track was done with swingup bridges, strings going through pulleys with little jars of nuts and bolts for the switches. Hand laid and spiked scale 2 rail. Layout was probably 20x30. Might have been 500 feet of track. An unfinished turntable and no buildings. The guy was a draftsman by trade and his craftsmanship showed well. He passed in 87. It was nearly painfull to take apart what obviously took a lot of work to build. I tried to sell it but had no takes. I salvaged the rails and sold them. Tables were cut into sections with my sawzall and I took them to storage. I didn't at the time have a place to re-use the tables so they were burned at a burn pile. Hopefully this layout can be saved as is. But if all you can save is the rails, you can pull them out by a pliers and just pulling them foreward past the next section of rail,,, don't pull up as you will bend the rails.
Modeling the "Fargo Area Rapid Transit" in O scale 3 rail.
Any, luck on a suitor?
The widow of a long time family doctor in the Cincinnati area is willing to part with her husband's layout for next to nothing. I have seen it and it is spectacular museum quality work that was started in 1980 and continued up until his death around 2000. Most of the trains were bought by the old Cincinnati Gas & Electric to use on their holiday display. If you've never seen CG&E's layout, it is also world class.
There are a few catches.
I didn't have time to measure it but would estimate that what she has would fill a full size 2 car garage possibly more. The bad part is the only opening to the layout is a regular old door like you have on a bedroom. So unless you can talk her into cutting a garage door in her house to move it all, you're gonna do some disassembly.
I am not that familiar with anything other than 3 rail O gauge but it looked like to me that some of the trackwork was outside third rail as well as some DC. Many of the buildings also are scratch built.
If anybody is interested I can try and put you in touch with her. It would be a shame to see it spend another winter in the damp basement of her house.
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