A reader got in touch in response to yesterday’s post about the current expansion of the Niagara St. Catharines & Toronto Railway. He asked a good question:
With your extension for the NS&T, will you be making it sectional so if there is another move, it can be dismantled and moved from the basement to another location?
It’s an excellent question. The short answer is “no”.
I know that building in sections works well for others – and I’m very glad it does. But for my hobby, I’m not a big believer in “saving” my layouts.
I could rescue the NS&T car barn section (which I built as a self-contained “layout” 2×8 feet before expanding into the rest of the room) and CNR Pine Street is an exhibition layout so it’s designed to be portable. But other than that it’ll all get torn out if / when we move.
There are many reasons for this, but here are the big three:
1 – They never, ever fit the next space as well as they could. (I know, because I’ve tried a couple of times to do this – with the HO scale B&M Claremont Branch and with the On2 S&PCRR. In both cases, I attempted to relocate from one part of the basement to another, and it was a poor fit at best.)
2 – I learn new skills and make new mistakes with each layout I build, and a move is an opportunity to do better next time.
3 – I frequently switch interests and a move is a good time to do that. (For example, if I had moved Port Rowan instead of binning it, I would not be modelling either the NS&T or my British branch line, Bydemill.)
I’ve torn out many layouts. I save the locomotives and rolling stock, the vehicles and details, the electronics, the structures, the trees, the lighting and audio equipment… everything but the track and benchwork. That stuff takes no time to build – once I figure out what I want to model, I can be up and running in a couple of months.
It’s the figuring out what to model that sometimes takes years…
The Model Railway Show 