I have more unbuilt kits of rolling stock and buildings and etc than the LHS !!!No brag, just fact!Not long ago, while at an auction, I spotted a large cardboard box with a bunch of train stuff in it.I asked the auctioneer when it would be auctioned, and he said they had already tried before I arrived and got zero bids, so they set it aside.He said he'd take a decent offer for it, and I asked him what he considerd a decent offer.His reply was a hundred dollars, so out came a moldy old Ben Franklin, and it was mine!Inside were 25 Accurail PRR box car kits, 5 Accurail PRR flatbed kits, and seven Spectrum "City Series" building kits, each one different!I picked up my receipt, my box of loot and I was gone, gone, gone and headed out of Dodge!!!
Later after a close scrutiny and inventory, all the parts for all the kits were there!Not a bad days haul from the auction barn!
The fact that I have too much stuff is directly attributable to the "limited production" practices of model manufacturers.
I've bought a lot of locos and cars I may never use because they look like something I might want to work with someday--say, ACL equipment in HO, even though I model in On30 right now--because if I miss buying it now, it may not be available later on.
I am sure that this makes said manufacturers very happy.
But I wish I didn't have to stockpile just-in-case.
I have the opposite problem... Not enough stuff!
Building an operating layout on a tight budget means that most of my money goes into that, and my rolling stock roster is suffering as a result. I have about half the number of cars I need to run full-length trains including run-through cars...
But hey, at least I don't have storage problems!
The multi-era concept allows me to acquire or build twice as much stuff as I can reasonably use at one time. I do need a better method of storage, but right now almost all of my 60's stuff is on the layout, and my 30's stuff is down below. I've even got one kit planned so that I can swap out buildings to get some that are more time-appropriate.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
I think you will find that most MR's do NOT collect too much stuff, because a few are into this strange habit does not mean all of us do the same, we would question why someone would buy far too much "stuff" for no apparent reason, you realise you cannot possibly build or use all the "stuff" you have, so why would you purchase it and more? I've asked a few non-MR people about a lot of MR's who collect hundreds of items and do nothing with them, they think they must have problems. You cannot slough this off as to " maybe I will need it in the future" there isn't enough time left in your lifetime.
American consumerism, ain't it grand?
Most of us are guilty.
Buy more and more stuff to keep the economy going around and around!
Then we buy stuff or houses in which to store the stuff we have so we can go out and buy more stuff!!
I live in a trailer and am trying to divest us some stuff {some of it junk really that I wonder why we keep} so we have more room {and maybe so we can get more stuff!!!}
At least us MRR's dont just throw everything out after awhile. we pass it on or store it! Good for recycling.
Whew!
-G .
Just my thoughts, ideas, opinions and experiences. Others may vary.
HO and N Scale.
After long and careful thought, they have convinced me. I have come to the conclusion that they are right. The aliens did it.
Hi!
I think there are several others out there (me included) that "feel your pain". In the early 2000s, I bought any and every car & loco that would work for my 1950s era ATSF / IC HO railroad. At my peak, I had over 600 cars and 65 plus locos. Given my layout was a room filling 11x15 with a lower level staging area, I only could handle about 125 cars and maybe a dozen or so locos (including B units). All cars on the layout were upgraded (KDs, Intermountain wheels) and NMRA "compliant". Most all the others were still in kit form.
At retirement in 2006, it hit me that (1) - I would probably never get a larger layout room, and (2) - many of my cars / locos were really expendable.
Previous to retirement, I had held "annual Ebay train sales" so I could sell off the Rivarossi and Athearn BB locos and upgrade to BLIs & Stewarts, & P2Ks.
After retirement, the annual sales (about 100 auctions each year) began the thinning out process. First to go were those cars that were outside my time frame or I just didn't like. Next came those that didn't make sense on my midwest / Texas ATSF RR. I had about 50 hopper kits representing most every RR in the country. Obviously, neither the ATSF or IC would be hauling a lot of foreign road hoppers. I also thinned out some duplicates and multiples of similar cars. The goal was to get a roster that reasonably related to the car percentages that the prototype would have.
Well, I got down to about 400 cars and 50 locos (including a lot of powered B units), and then I demo'd the existing layout and began to build a "new and improved" replacement. However, the new one would be DCC powered. And this gave me a criteria to further thin out locos. I asked a lot of questions, and read a lot to finally make a list of my locos and their ease of conversion to DCC. I found that I had about 5 or 6 that were probably too much of a stretch for me - so on to Ebay they went. And then I realized that I had 10 ATSF 1st generation switchers - some of which were very few in number on the prototype. So, those got thinned out as well.
I'm still overloaded with cars - especially passenger cars - and will probably thin those out next season as well. On the other side, I've got about 50 various petroleum tank cars (half still kits) that will someday fill a display case as homage to my 40 years in the "earl bizzness".
Ha, all the above being said, I realize two things. First, my over buying was my "making up" for not having those things when I was younger. Second, "too much stuff" ain't all that bad a situation.
Hey, ENJOY,
Mobilman44
ENJOY !
Living in southeast Texas, formerly modeling the "postwar" Santa Fe and Illinois Central
Being model railroaders we just like models - the rationals are in some cases different from each other, but we do like models and we usually buy what we like and can afford. Sooner or latter the "must have factor" starts its inevitable decline and as in the ways of love we become ruled more by our heads than our hearts.
It's my thing now that I want to slim down/simplify many aspects of my life as I become more aware of my own mortality. What I had collected over the years seems now to be too much and this is no less true than when it comes to my rolling stock and locomotive inventory. I guess after selling most of my MRR collection I am left with about 16 locomotives - both steam and diesel and around 50 pieces of rolling stock - passenger and freight cars. This is very managable now as is the number of building kits I have with most now having been built to at least a basic level with slightly more than a third all finished - that includes weathered and detailed.
But my journey in the hobby is not what rings the good time bell for many others and that is just how it should be.
To each his own - that's what I say
Bruce
My motto has always been
Buy locomotives ...and lots of them!
But seriously, it's gotten to the point where I've run out of space to store any additional locos and cars. I think I'm at the stage where I can stop buying and just sit back and watch 'em run. And my fleet of locos is large enough that I'll never get bored of looking at the same old thing running around the layout.
I have the same curse, but to combate it I'm selling off 3/4 of my collection, keeping and focusing on only the most important primary peices, and disregarding anything that doesnt fit these primary objectives.
Have fun with your trains
I think I have the curse pretty bad. I have 27 engines, and about 115 pieces of rolling stock. What's even worse is out of those engines and cars, I have 0 reffers or SD40-2s. Also, I don't have a layout, but rather stockpiling for that dream layout.
I've put up a few cars and a loco up that didn't quite fit my era on ebay, so the number may drop a bit. It may pick up after the Pensacola show. I probably won't buy any more engines after the P-cola show until I finish the other project locos I have.
Griz, I call dibs on the leasing out stuff.
Vincent
Wants: 1. high-quality, sound equipped, SD40-2s, C636s, C30-7s, and F-units in BN. As for ones that don't cost an arm and a leg, that's out of the question....
2. An end to the limited-production and other crap that makes models harder to get and more expensive.
good idea, chuck. maybe i can lease them out to other model railroaders. what is the average HO scale per-diem? about 3 cents a day?
grizlump
You sound like one of the original nice guys in this hobby. Might I someday be like you if I am not already so.
Rich
I've off sold a lot of the Blue Box cars and locomotives that I bought back in the 70s and early 80s. With my around-the-wall layout, for me owning 100 freight cars would be too "over the top". For the industries I will have, boxcars, covered and centerflow hoppers will dominate the layout. The old BBs and Roundhouse cars that I still have will be "freight train fillers".
I now have about 40 freight cars and 25 passenger cars. Unless I find a P2K RF&P E8 unit on ebay, or somebody produces a U36B or SDP40f, I've decided not to purchase any more locomotives until the majority of my current fleet is DCC decoder equipped.
My wife's cousin has 150+ freight cars and 40+ locomotives. . Many of them are parked on his folded dogbone layout, giving it a very crowded look. I visit him often and have seen him take locomotives that sat on a shelf or in a box for months......put it on the track and instantly present problems. IMHO, he's having difficulty keeping up with the required routine maintenance. I've seen similar problems with his car fleet. On one occasion I helped him install 30+ Kadee Coupler springs on cars that had lost them over the course of time!
He couldn't understand why I shrank my fleet. I explained to him that with a huge fleet there would be a lot of Kadee couplers, trucks, axle sets, adjustments, and dust to take care of. For a lone wolf like me, an ideal fleet size is 50 freight cars max, 30 passenger cars max, and 25 locomotives. This would provide me with plenty of operational satisfaction, while keeping the required maintenance, manageable.
Even though my focus now is on metalizing my passenger cars and installing DCC, I'll continue to buy a quality freight car or passenger car "here and there" from time to time, but I'm disciplining myself to maintain or stay below the numbers I described above.
"I like my Pullman Standards & Budds in Stainless Steel flavors, thank you!"
Don't look now, but there's a prototype for, "Too many cars for the railroad."
During the height of the per-diem boxcar bonanza, there were so many boxcars carrying the reporting marks of the Bonhomie and Hattiesburg Southern that, if all were to return to home rails at once, there wouldn't have been enough track to hold them all.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with too much rolling stock)
JimRCGMOLOL - in the words of Pogo: "We have met the enemy, and he is us."
"May the good lord smite me with such a curse ..... and may I never recover!" Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof
Ray Seneca Lake, Ontario, and Western R.R. (S.L.O.&W.) in HO
We'll get there sooner or later!
Well, after seeing way too much of myself in several of the posts here, I've decided (I work in the mental health field) that I am delusional... I have much, much more in the way of structure kits than I could realistically put on my layout if I had the spare bedroom to use (right now, the layout is 8 feet long by 2 to 2.5 feet deep, with more to be added if I want any roundy-roundy or even enough track to do some switching using the passing track on my mainline.
I think my problem (I'll speak for myself) is that I see a kit (freight car, caboose, structure), details, or loco that I like the looks of, and "Gee, that'd look nice beside the grain elevator (which is also still to be built)..." instead of planning ahead and saying "Okay, if the final size for the layout will be (for example) 11 feet by 11 feet, what structures, scenery and details can I fit on it, and how many locos, freight cars, people and vehicles will fit on the layout, too?"
I don't very much succumb to the craving for one of those limited run/edition cars/whatever, since I have only so much available in the way of funds. Once in a while, but not generally. But oh, those delightfully crafted sale flyers that those 'devils' at Walthers put out each month, in luscious color, stimulating all kinds of MRR-lust in me.... (Yeah, it's their fault, that's it!)
Sorta like the old statement about "My eyes were bigger than my stomach" - just reworked into "My eyes were bigger than my available layout space" (or available space in the county, for some of us.
LOL - in the words of Pogo: "We have met the enemy, and he is us."
Jim in Cape Girardeau
Can you have too much stuff?
I have more rolling stock then I need to operate my layout. The excess just gets rotated on-off through interchanges. Some cars, like my coal hoppers are always on the layout, but the rest make an appearance every 3rd operating session or so. When not on the layout, the cars live in plastic crates under it.
Nick
Take a Ride on the Reading with the: Reading Company Technical & Historical Society http://www.readingrailroad.org/
I have three large old dressers whose drawers are carefully packed with rolling stock. Okay, I've got Squirrel blood, LOL! About four years ago, I gave away around 250 pieces of rolling stock to my nephew that didn't 'fit in' with the era I've decided to model. Didn't make a dent.
I do a lot of alternating on the Yuba River Sub. And as soon as I get my staging yard in (he said, hopefully ), I'll be at least able to do some on-layout rotating without carefully unpacking and carefully re-packing.
I will admit that my MAJOR problem is refrigerator cars. I cannot pass by the shelves in my two LHS' without picking up one or two. Right now I could give PFE a MAJOR run for their money as far as rolling stock goes.
But then, and I don't know about the rest of you--but I was brought up on the old Adage: "He who dies with the most toys WINS!
Tom
Tom View my layout photos! http://s299.photobucket.com/albums/mm310/TWhite-014/Rio%20Grande%20Yuba%20River%20Sub One can NEVER have too many Articulateds!
My dream-superlayout is very much a work in progress, and my rolling stock collection (sized to be a bit too much for the completed layout) has been complete for years. My solution? cassettes; 54 inch lengths of steel stud with Atlas Code 100 flex caulked to the inside, rain-gutter style. By no coincidence at all, 54 inches is the 'standard' length of my local freights - so each cassette can hold a dozen 4-wheel goods wagons plus motive power.
The 'ferry slip' for the cassettes is a spur off the lead to one of my (to be) hidden staging yards, so adding or removing a train from the layout is a simple matter of placing the cassette, then a quick pull-forward/back up maneuver. Usually, I exchange one train for another. Of course, there are a few items that don't leave cassette storage very often - a four-truck machinery flat isn't something that would make frequent appearances, nor is my wedge plow.
Cassettes, loaded and empty, are kept on shelf brackets on the one wall that doesn't have benchwork against it. The car cards for the loaded cassettes are placed in the cassette so they won't go astray when that train returns to revenue service.
If, in the future, it appears that I have a surplus of cassettes, I'll simply kitbash a few more trains.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
loathar Great Western Rwy fanToo Much???? There's no such thing as "too much Trains!!" I would have agreed with you till I saw Ebay pictures of that guy that collected cheap Tyco/LL stuff. His basement was packed to the rafters. It looked like you couldn't even walk through it. That almost looked like a mental disorder.
Great Western Rwy fanToo Much???? There's no such thing as "too much Trains!!"
I would have agreed with you till I saw Ebay pictures of that guy that collected cheap Tyco/LL stuff. His basement was packed to the rafters. It looked like you couldn't even walk through it. That almost looked like a mental disorder.
That one made me worry! What is the rest of his house like?!
Any argument carried far enough will end up in Semantics--Hartz's law of rhetoric Emerald. Leemer and Southern The route of the Sceptre Express Barry
I just started my blog site...more stuff to come...
http://modeltrainswithmusic.blogspot.ca/
I've been building wall mounted display cases for my overstock. My thinking is "they are models and they should be on display" Building the cases is a little vacation from modeling too.
I should sell off some of the overstock,things that I can't operate realisticaly on my layout,large steamer and long passenger cars, but they look nice in the cases. BILL
CNJ831Smart hobbyists sooner or later come to the realization that they have bought far beyond what their actual needs could ever require or even ever use and begin divesting themselves of the excess...to the great benefit of eBay!
Which leads me to wonder ---how many of these various kits may have been re-re-recycled over 'X' periods of time----
And could one suggest that just maybe there is an overall surplus of lokes and rolling stock out there----HHMMM
Gee, I thought I was bad. My yard is over-filled, and I've usually got my passing sidings occupied with trains. There are boxes of trains under the layout, and 15 or 20 cars still with horn-hooks from The Wonder Years. I've only got a couple of working engines off-layout. I'm down to 4 car kits in the basement, unless there's one or two under the pile of structure kits. Maybe half a dozen Jordan vehicles still in their boxes, too.
But, I've been good lately. The last engine I bought was a replacement mechanism for an old F7, and before that a trolley over a year ago. Lately, I've been doing sound installations to upgrade my engines without buying new ones. But I was at my LHS a couple of days ago, and I was looking at the short Rivarossi heavyweight passenger cars. They'll run on my tight curves. I was so tempted...
In the fall, I've been promised no opposition to adding an extension to my layout. That's the solution.
One thing you can do is pack some away and rotate them a couple of times a year. Nothing like giving things a new look now and then.
Springfield PA
griz,I understand that problem all to well...
As many may recall I am very fond of short line IPD boxcars and I ended up with 214 of 'em.However,these cars where use at both HO clubs so,that leaves me out as a collector.
I had 87 locomotives and 14 of those was short line locomotives that was used at both HO clubs.Again leaves me out of the league of collectors.
Many will also recall I sold 66% of my HO and later sold even more keeping enough to use at one club since I went on the inactive list at the other HO club.
My N Scale collection is becoming a mix bag of N&W,NS and CSX and is filling my needs..N&W for home and NS/CSX for club use.
I agree with Bob..There's nothing like having enough engines and cars for variations in locomotives and especially freight cars.In fact all of my past ISLs used a freight rotation system..Cars bound for interchange was removed and stored for at least 6 operation sessions before reappearing on the layout.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
Like many of us I too accumulated too many pieces of rolling stock. Because many of them were purchased 15 or 20 years ago and were of the athearn BB lineage, they did not meet my current high standards of detailed rolling stock. So I simply sold the "sub par" rolling stock and purchased much higher quality stock that now is available for sale, like atlas and athearn genesis box cars.
So, sell the junk on ebay and use your profits to buy less, but better detailed rolling stock.