I've been pondering the future and would like my layout to go to a good home when I am done with it. We are hopefully years away from this but you never know. Have any of you ever given your layout away to a stranger in hopes of it continuing to give enjoyment to someone that would look after it, and maybe add to it? Maybe someone just starting out or is just less fortunate and who would really appreciate such a gift? If you did, were you able to keep in touch with the person to hear about what was going on with it.
Brent
"All of the world's problems are the result of the difference between how we think and how the world works."
Yes, I have. I gave my 2nd layout to a friend with a Autistic brother.
- Luke
Modeling the Southern Pacific in the 1960's-1980's
I've given layouts to a few friends and a couple of relatives.
Dr. Frankendiesel aka Scott Running BearSpace Mouse for president!15 year veteran fire fighterCollector of Apple //e'sRunning Bear EnterprisesHistory Channel Club life member.beatus homo qui invenit sapientiam
I gave my previous 4x8 layout to a beginner, it was VERY appreciated. I had removed some of my scratchbuilt structures but I let one Athearn loco (DCC) + a few simpler boxcars accompany it. I had an old Roco digital is cool that i gave him as well. He is now building a new layout, but he had a good 4 years with my old one.
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Yup. It was a portable HO switching layout on two 2' x 4' sections with a backdrop of 1' x 8" lumber and a pegboard cover over the bottom. In the storage mode, the two sections formed a box protecting the track on the inside, the pegboard covering became the outside of the box that protected the wiring and switch machines. The control panel was "split" (applicable controls were on their respective sections) so the only electrical connections were two jacks for AC and DC power.
I lugged it around for some years, then finally gave it to one of the neighborhood kids. I think his name was George Sellios.
Ok... that last part was made-up.
Jim
I built one for a Lion's Club auction once. It seemed fitting since the Lions have as one of their goals to assist people with vision issues. I'm almost blind.
As I recall, it sold for over $300 and would have gone higher had there been another interested bidder. The person who bought it told me that someone would have had to have bid over $600 to get it from him.
I've often thought that a club could do a community project like that... get a few local businesses to "buy a car" for an amount that would not only pay for the car but some extra stuff as well. Say you sold sponsorships for ten cars for $50 each then built a layout using the $500. Upon completion, have it auctioned or raffled off for a local charity.
dlm
I gave away a 4 x 8 Ho layout to a needy family...the smiles are their faces were bigger than the 18" radius curves on the layout.
Well, I have not given away a layout, but I am a member of a group of mrr´s building a modular narrow gauge layout which we publicly display and operate twice a year. The admission fee we charge goes to the funding of various charity projects and we are always amazed of how much money we collect on these occasions.
Just to give you an idea on the size of the layout, track length is 400 feet, single track line with about 10 intermediate stations, 5 to 8 trains operating with time table and fast clock, train coordination via CTC and dispatcher, all stations interconnected by old-fashioned, crank-type telephones.
Lotsa fun!
It wasn't a train layout, but a slotcar layout. I had an HO slot car layout (complete with houses under construction). After a layoff, a friend with two boys didn't have money to buy them Christmas presents, so I gave it to him to give to his boys. They were ecstatic!
Marlon
See pictures of the Clinton-Golden Valley RR
I have a different result from giving away a layout than what most here have had.
I had built a 9 x 14 HO layout that was raised by cable over the car in the garage. It was the effort of several years of work by myself and two sons. As the time the sons were gone and wanting to move, I tried to sell the layout. Finally just gave it away. A man with three sons hauled it away and my thoughts were that it was going to a fitting place. A couple of weeks later the man called to say that nothing would run and could I come over to look at the problem.What I found was a shock. The layout was on the ground in the back yard and even wet down with a nearby lawn sprinkler. The boys had adourned the layout with GI joe and a host of Tonka trucks. I decided then and there that if I ever had to part with a layout I would salage what I could and burn the rest.
Cliff
Years ago my second layout was a 6 x 6 1/2 ft layout in 4 sections. I couldn't move it home from Germany, but the beer delivery man (yeah you could get home delivery of beer) was a model railroader, so I gave him the benchwork after I removed the track, trains, and buildings.
Enjoy
Paul
I gave away a 2-1/2' x 6' N-scale layout I worked on while I was living in an apartment. After we moved into a larger place, I needed to get rid of it to make room for a more permanent HO-scale layout. I just took a couple pictures, created two "Free to a Good Home" posters and left them at the two LHS's. Since I was switching scales, I also sweetened the pot by offering my one Kato SD-40 plus about ten cars for only $75 to whoever took the layout. Sure enough, a couple days later, a younger guy that helped out at one of the shops called me up. Within hours, the layout was out of my basement, and I had a slightly used Kato HO GP-35 that he wanted to trade for the loco and cars. I don't know what happened to the layout, but I fixed up the GP-35 and run it frequently on my new layout. In the end, I think I got the better end of the deal.
Tom
At the Boothbay Railway Village model RR group, we have been accepting donations of railroad layouts and parts of layouts, rolling stock and structures for many years. We evaluate what is donated, and in a number of cases we do some repair work and raffle the layout as a fundraiser for our new permanent layout construction. If the layout can not be moved intact, we will strip it of any useful items and scrap the rest. We sell what we save at modelrailroad shows to raise funds. As we are part of a non-profit organization, the donors can list the value of what is donated as a charitable contrubution on their taxes. Our group got started when a couple of large layouts were donated to the museum. Part of one of them was used as a display layout for a number of years until we raised enough money to start a new layout designed by one of our members.
George In Midcoast Maine, 'bout halfway up the Rockland branch
No, but my grandfather gave away his layout to a Boy Scout Troop in Pineville, LA. He had a large HO layout located in a building behind their house and modeled the Rock Island railroad pulpwood operations in the central Louisiana area during the steam era. He built and maintained the layout from the 1950's until the late 1960's when boredom set in and other hobbies took his interest. He went on to build various structures on his property including a geodesic dome, a large gazebo and a greenhouse for his new cactus growing hobby.
I remember as a child being heartbroken that he had given away all his train stuff, but I am sure it went to better use. Who knows what happened to all his train stuff, I have one piece of his old rolling stock left, an old pulpwood car.
Ryan BoudreauxThe Piedmont Division Modeling The Southern Railway, Norfolk & Western & Norfolk Southern in HO during the merger eraCajun Chef Ryan
Gave away a completed N Scale 2 x 4 Gorre and Daphetid layout, based on Johns first layout. I left N Scale for HO at the time, so I also supplied the neighbors son with rolling stock, an RS3 loco and a powerpack. I hope that boy still has an inerest, he should be in his early 20's by now.
"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination."-Albert Einstein
http://gearedsteam.blogspot.com/
I have built several small layouts with the intent from the beginning of giving them away. My first N scale layout, 2x4 feet by almost a foot tall mountains, sort of very generically intended as something in Colorado was built about 1970 for a friend's 10 year foster kid, carried on a car roof 200 miles.
A few years later, I built a 30" x 40" layout in 10 days as a favor for a friend's kid who wanted something to show at a scout fair. I made it a twice-around with no turnouts so no dead spots for trains to stall.
I don't remember what I did with it, must have given it away because I wanted space to build my "real" layout. I can't image giving away my real layouts because they are too customized for use of space. And I have seen so mnay people attempt to sell layouts. With no success. Except for a club that rebuilt old discarded layouts to custom specs for a fund-raising project. I always have to think of space when making something for someone, especially if it is going to be a surprise. When In surprised my cousin with a dollhouse of HER house (which had a family history going back 3 generations) I only made a model 12 inches deep so it could rest on top of a chest of drawers or something.
While I was in high school and college I built an N scale layout using the track plans for the Epethet Creek railroad published in MR in the early '70s. I was living in my parents' house and they moved away during my senior year of college; I had to move into an apartment, so the layout needed a new home. I decided to give it away so I could choose who got it. I asked a fellow model railroader and he recommended a nice 17-year old kid. I invited him over and he assured me that the layout would continue like I had started it: code 55 hand laid track, hand made ground throws, etc.
I hired a photographer to take some good photos for me, and hauled it to its new owner.
I decided to never look him up, because I couldn't bear to see anything on the layout that wasn't my work. At times I wonder what happened to it, but I think I'm best off not knowing (kind of like past girlfriends).
Here are a few pictures of my work when I was a teen in the mid '70s (I think it still holds up pretty well, today):
For what it's worth, only the station and water tower were kits, everything else was scratch built - including the turntable. I used an SCR controlled throttle and got decent performance out of that Aurora 0-6-0. To make the "pizza-cutter" flanges work on code 55 rail with code 70 spikes, I developed a method for turning the flanges down.
During that time I learned a lot about model railroading.
Phil, I'm not a rocket scientist; they are my students.
I started out building an O gauge layout for the kids at my son's special needs school. I need to go up the the LHS at the time to get a few things and one of the guys asked me what I was doing with O gauge stuff when I modeled HO. I told him and I left the store. About 45 minutes to an hour later 5 guys who hung out at the hobby shop came by to help with along with a couple of boxes of stuff donated by the owner of the store, and we thought he was a Grinch. I can't say weather it was Christmas sprit or just model railroad guys getting together to do something nice for a bunch of special kids but it was cool, and not one fight over what went where or it this wasn't what the prototype would do etc.
Good on you guys, donating layouts to deserving people, what a treat to hear. I seem to hear stories of guys just smashing up their old layouts and never thinking of seeing if someone could use it, or any of the components, you all deserve a medal, nice going.