You got the lady a favor and had them removed and in your possesion. Good they didnt go to a dump...
Your in the same ordeal I have, a lot of stuff, and I have to decide what to keep or get rid of.
I have already sided out a lot of stuff to sell, which includes original Athearn RDC's, some good locos, and some redundent stuff or out of era stuff, or more toyish stuff. I had a Tenshodo 0-8-0 but I sold it off, the details were wrong for my prototype, now I am kicking my rear for doing so.
Absolutely hang onto it then as you go piece it out to see what fits or what has to go.
Well, Congratulations!
I would keep it all in the boxes for now and work on the Office. When things settle down, take out one box per week or month and carefully consider the contents. Keep what you really weawly want... and ebay the rest out of that box.
Pack the weawly keepers in a box and mark it with your name. Someday you will run those trains. Pack the Ebay items in it's own box and soon enough, your wife will see that you are serious about selling those items on ebay.
Eventually that large stash you hauled home will have two smaller piles. Your trains that you will keep and use for most certain and the rest to be sold. Then you and your spouse can discuss how best to use the revenue AFTER the selling is finished and the fees paid.
At the end of the day, you will have trains to be happy with and a wife who understood that you could keep some but not all the stuff you dragged out of that basement.
Take your time and slowly. You probably are under the influence right now from this amazing development of events and need to come back down to earth sooner or later. Dont do anything right now until that Office is up and running.
I am not sure what to make of this, even now... I have had such a great run of luck as of late... All of us are healthy, our business is moving out of the garage and into an commercial office space so we can grow... More work than we can do... that is partially why I came to find this excellent stash of HO Scale trains. We hired a lady to clean house once weekly, and she was kind enough to mention (when she saw my train room) that her father had been a model railroader before he died... The conversation went on and she asked would I be interested in taking a look at the trains- her mom wanted them out of the house... I agreed. I was shocked when I saw all there was- Amtrack set... No the big one, Daylight in both steam and the F7 A&B consist, two E8 AB sets, over 100 assorted freight cars in some pretty rare road names, The Chrome Sante Fe passenger set, the one with 3 passenger cars, a standard sante fe passenger set (war bonnet)but it had 6 cars (heavyweights), a rather large UP passenger set 12 cars this one has an F7 ABB set as its motive power, two all brass steamers-a mike, and a consolidated, a pair of SD40s in SF, An Alco RS1 in SF, two sets of SD40-2 in BN, a gandy dancer, and a tyco trolley. Also a couple of dozen buildings, 3 dual cab power packs- One MRC the others TEch II, two other Tech II packs, some sort of remote control packs that were wired into the control panel, about 2 miles of wire, 12 switch contols, 3 selectors, a controller, and nearly 2 dozen lights, many wired into relays. I assume to control signals. this isn't everything, just what comes to mind right now.
I was interested, but I refused to set a value. I told them to call any of the three hobby shops in town, or one of the auctioneers to set a value. A week went past, we talked again and I have to say- I got it for a song, but it was a lot of work to box up,pack carefully, and hike up and out of a basement. It all ran, all appeared to be in good condition, and there were boxes and papers for most all of the locos and a ton for the rolling stock... Iwill have photos when I have time to get to it, but I am opening our office this week and I may not get to it for a while.
Visions are dancing in my head, open a hobby shop, sell on Ebay, build a kickin' layout, fill display cases... Wife says I can't keep it all- We will see about that...