I'm putting up my vast collection of 'N' gauge railway stuff. The layout goes right around the attic and if I send a coal train out at scale speed I won't see it again for at least five minutes. The collection of engines and rolling stock exceeds even that huge track plan and it's all going to go. All of it.
Why? I'm getting old. I no longer have the eyesight and steady fingers of a twenty-year-old and putting thirty coal trucks onto track that's nine millimetres wide is enough to drive me insane. Then there are those long steam engines with all the wheels and one wheel out of line means it'll run fine - until it hits a set of points.
I might go back to railway modelling in the future but it'll be in a bigger scale. I've long been hankering after a G scale live steam train in the garden, but the cost!
It's a bit of a wrench, some of that stuff has been with me for decades and some of it is handmade. As you can imagine, I went over the top with it as I do in all things. There is a scale A4 'Coronation' in whitemetal that I never managed to add the lining to, and I'm the only N gauge modeller I know with a Class 35 Hymek.
I know the geeky train terminology means nothing to most of you so here are some non-train pictures of models in that scale.
The ruler is in centimetres and all the models are metal. I have a signal box with all internal fittings too, and as with those pictured I really don't think I could assemble and paint such tiny things now. These days I prefer to work in 1/24th rather than 1/600th scale and yes, I have brass wire to add brake pipes and engine wiring to those model trucks. Bigger scale means better detail. Even in places nobody can see it. I know it's there and that's all that matters.
Another issue is glue. Those metal models need superglue and I have pondered the day I might turn up in casualty with tiny brass signal levers stuck to my fingers. It could happen. I have made working N gauge signals in the past. I can just see me growling at the doctor who is trying to remove them - 'Don't bend them.'
Sorting the stuff, persuading myself that this time I really do have to sell it and then getting decent photos and putting it all on eBay will take time. But it must be done and the lead-up to Christmas is the time to do it.
I can no longer see these things properly and am too old to make any more.
And I'm skint. That's the decider.
UPDATE: Rechargeable batteries were not invented by man. They are extruded from the Devil's suppurating anus after a particularly bad bout of 'Helli belly'. They sit for ages claiming to be fully charged while you take inconsequential snapshots but as soon as you need to take photos for any serious reason, they die. Anyway, I charged them up and found my photography isn't too good on such tiny things. Tomorrow I will enlist the help of someone who has a proper macro lens with a circular flash on the end. The link will go up when I finally get this done!
It seemed like such an easy idea...
30 comments:
You have my sympathy. It's not easy to part with things which have so many memories.
Just recently I parted with around 30 pairs of shoes. Because of arthritis in a foot I'll never be able to get said foot into any of the shoes now.
Only 5 had ever been worn but I'd collected the others over a period of some 30 years or so, because I could see the day when they would be perfect to complete an ensemble.
I didn't make any money from them because I passed them on to a younger friend who I knew would appreciate them and I felt more comfortable knowing they'd gone to a good home. Many cost me a few week's spending money and a few cost far more.
However, I know shoes aren't the same as your hand crafted rolling stock although hopefully you understand the similarities.
There's a positive side to my tale though. I kept the matching handbags. :)
With me, it's African and Indian hunting trophies. Specifically, antelope skull mounts with horns.
Don't ask! In my hallway, you're never short of a place to hang your coat!
I feel your pain, and admire your strength.
On Ebay, you need a reserve or a good start price, or there's a danger it'll go to cheap. It's not about the money, it's the reassurance that it will go to someone who will value it.
I once picked up a huge box of hand-made track and points at an auction, for 50p. Nobody wanted it. I didn't, either, but I looked after it til I gave it to someone who did.
I have an attic full of Landsknechts, Swiss pikemen and gothic knights myself...
Old? Your still a sprog.
I save full ashtrays and crushed guinness cans. Then I get rid of them and start again every week.
For me it's all those intricate repairs I used to make to my wife's jewellery and other items, and reading. I now need glasses and sometimes a magnifying glass. But I haven't quite reached the stage where I've completely accepted it, so I waste loads of time trying to do something, failing, then having to go look for my glasses.
Contact lenses, glasses on top, magnifying glass and lots of light.
Go E.M.gauge with proper track standards. You'll love it.
I think I feel lust....a strange thing in one of such advanced age, but there it is...any hints as to your ebay ID, or put a link on here?
Fellow geek (female) alert :P
Not that I beleive I could afford all that lot, but will you post the item number when it goes up so we can view it?
If you're skint I'll still offer you some money for your old air rifle. You can't put them on ebay.
(Just to join the theme, my collections are Spectrum games and Hardy Boys books.)
I have a collection of American Civil War bubble gum cards which will be hitting ebay fairly soon. And guitars. They won't be going on ebay. I should but I may well get the urge to start playing again. Properly I mean.
O got one eye cooked by laser last year. Works spankingly well. Soldering guitar bits can still be a problem but it always was.
When a man must be parted from his train set, we've reached a pretty pass.
XX Conan the Librarian™ said...
I have an attic full of Landsknechts, Swiss pikemen and gothic knights myself... XX
Aye. I have Samurai, and Napolionic. We both know what we mean. :-)
But if I had not given out the money for lead and paint, it would have only gone on that horrible alchohol stuff....... Wait a minute....!
Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.....With me, I still collect cars in 1/43rd scale, but the ones I build are larger, like 1/8th scale FIAT grand prix racers from 1907.
With the bikes of course its still 1/1.
02:51
however, I know shoes aren't the same as your hand crafted rolling stock although hopefully you understand the similarities.
yes, of course we do dear - if you slip into your favourite pair of heels, i daresay old leg-iron (furry fumbling fudgy fingers and all) will undoubtably get the irresistible urge to shunt you.
22:14
hmmm...beware of undesirable accidents - you two young accessories must take on-board the fact that leg-iron is hardly in his prime thesedays...almost over-the-hill, if you follow my line of thinking...physical and age-related compatiblity has to be a serious consideration now, you know...
ohhhh no...we've left him behind, we've left him behind...
22:43
hurry along, hurry along...or i'm afraid that this combination might hit the buffers.
Another issue is glue. Those metal models need superglue and I have pondered the day I might turn up in casualty with tiny brass signal levers stuck to my fingers.
glu or no glue, it's not half as embarrassing as turning up in an anorak at accident and emergency with your nob irreversibly connected to the gotthard tunnel, hey leg-iron...?
the joy of coupling - no hump shunting.
23:30
well, well...seems they've really got the goods on you, mr leg-iron.
now, as it happens, i'm a collector of sorts, myself...mostly garbage, of course...at the moment i'm lumbered with a redundant political party which is stuck in a disused siding going nowhere...make that two actually...i bought them as an attractive combo-outfit, but it's all gone rather pear-shaped, mainly because technological progress has left it looking about as modern as a duckweed-infested canal...any ideas as to how or where i could best off-load the unwanted freight unit?
00:16
i think you're both really mean. and i refuse to come out of my shed. so there.
00:49
ed don't smoke, but that's basically because 'e ain't goin' nowhere; the new world timetable have got him spinning like fuckin' chump on their turntable and you can't tell from one day to the next which line 'e's gonna take; we're just lucky our number came up today and 'e come out on the right track...or was that the left one? i get confused, i've been manning the picket-line down at scott's in mayfair, not a single fuckin' bottle of champers got past me.
01:34
oooh...there's a real socialist - he knows how to take a24-hour 'tea-break' and what to do with it.
oooh...we're coming along. we're coming along...
Appreciate your comment to joys of coupling LI. I'm no baby snatcher.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could eradicate 'geek' and 'nerd' from our language? What's wrong with good old fashioned 'anorak' or 'tosser'?
Tedioustantrums
I remember them, easpecially the guy falling off his horse and being impaled on an abatis...Evil little bastard that I was...
Furor, the last figures I ever did were Ancient Chinese based on the terracotta army. Should I bury them in the garden...?
Na. They are like bindweed, you will be trying to eradicate them for years if you do that.
Yes Conan that was the true joy of collecting the cards, Gruesome. Horrible. Blood thirsty. Excellent for small chaps. The other great pull was the money. In each packet there was a faky American note of the usual denominations. It was easy to collect or swap towards a huge wad. Megalomania came free as a second level hit.
The chewing gum was pretty nasty to say the least.
Leg Iron is nothing but an idle slacker, ladies and gentlemen ;-)
Zat is not a model railway Leggy- ZIS is a model railway!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2068260/Take-ride-worlds-longest-model-train-39-000ft-tracks-quarter-acre-took-500-000-hours-build.html
XX Zat is not a model railway Leggy- ZIS is a model railway! XX
Aye. It is rather excellent.
I would reccomend it to any one suffering a visit to Hamburg.
BUT(!!!) If you ARE a railway moddler, be prepared for a good 12 months depression afterwards.
HOW the HEL do you beat THAT in your boxroom? :-))
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