@necrails posted:Nothing good will happen to them while sitting in the attic......wise words for sure. My motto is if I don't use it I don't keep it. Storing things in an attic or storage unit places them out of mind and likely never used. If you are approaching that age where you are in the next to last lap turn your unused stuff into money and enjoy it.
Really? In 2012, due to personal reasons, I packed up my Christmas layout (12' X 20') not knowing if I would put them up again or not. I put the boards in a shed, the engines on shelves in the house, and the PW cars went into some old dresser drawers. And I used my only other space, the attic, to pack up boxes and BOXES of stuff. Cars, track, switches, transformers -you get the drift.
This year, I decided was to be the year of the Christmas layout, so I hauled nearly all of it down. I left that post war O31 track & switches. I wish I had done a better labeling job, but other than that, it all came down, unpacked well, and went on the 8' x 18' project I did this year. All worked like the day I packed it. I had to work on some MTH switches (trust me, a common event for users of the track) and some track, but there were NO major problems. Up there were the American Flyer coal loader, the Lionel log and cattle loader and a coal loader - dating back to the '50's.
Again, with no movement, the stuff did well for 12 years and the fluctuating temperature change did no harm! (though I do think that the heat or cold, caused the tabs on the MTH Realtrax to become brittle on many pieces. I was totally amazed.
Then, thinking about it, that was what my old man did every year after 1950, and what I did also back then. And we packed it all: cars, and engines (there were only 2 engines, a 1946 and a 1947) and each Christmas, it was all put up, and then taken down the next Christmas.
I have not taken down the setup for this year...yet. But it will happen in the next couple of weeks, and it will go back into the attic! Until the next time. Just another point of view.
Greg (this year's is below)
