Buy it ALL!!!

I may, at one point in my life enjoyed doing that. As for this hobby, I picked a road (N&W) and ultimately settled on all scale, all steam, all command control. There are a few extraneous pieces that have slipped in but I've just given you a fairly good description of my collection. The older I get the more I have learned to be grateful for what I have and just let go of everything else.

 

Just my $0.02

 

Gilly

During one of my assignments at Bragg I attended the Southeast Division of the TCA shows.  They were held in a Sears meeting room in a mall in Raleigh, NC.

 

A one day show, either Sat or Sun and I had a table.  Across the isle a member had a table with an eclectic assembly of mostly Postwar Lionel and a few Marx.

 

At the end of the show, as we were packing up, he approached me and asked if I wanted everything he had left, for $250.  I had the cash (I had a good show), and I thought why not.  So we packed up his stuff too.

 

Some of his items included a 2243 Santa Fe AB, Marx 333 and tender, ZW, 3854 scale operating boxcar with box (black doors and end chip), 665 with tender and several freight cars and other miscellany. 

 

A good end to a good show.  I replaced the chipped 3854 end with a new one from Madison Hardware (same as a 714/2954 end).

 

 

Gilly

your $0.02 is worth more than 2 cents. Ive learned long ago that experience is the best teacher and that we can learn much from the old timers. My father-in-law was 80 when he went to be with the Lord, and he had much more to share than we could ever imagine.

Unlimited funds??  I'd buy a large warehouse building to build real miles of track in a layout that would take hours to traverse the whole layout.

Dave,

 

Thats what I am thinking.  A few more trains and a LOT more real estate.  I would probably spend so much time on scenery that I wouldn't have time for more trains.

 

Tom

As mentioned above, with unlimited funds, I would have three warehouses , one would house a Postwar operating Museum layout. 2nd would house four,  scale operating layouts, HO, O 2 rail, O Scale 3 rail and N scale.
3rd warehouse would be the storage facility for small portable knock down layouts that would travel to train shows to promote operations and scenery techniques.

Happened to me at a flea market, another seller bought everything i had left, but I've never seen it at a train show.

If I was in the green, I would have a warehouse with a O scale layout of the SP.  It would be circa the 1950's and would be an accurate depiction of the SP around the San Francisco Bay Area.  It would include the Mission Bay Yard (San Francisco) and the Bayshore Yard (Brisbane).  I love rail yards and industrial areas.  It would also include the SP station that was at 4th and Townsend Streets in San Francisco.  Maybe I'd make the SP lines all the way to San Jose!  I'd try to find and buy all of the scale SP steam and diesel locomotives (of that era) made by Sunset, Atlas, Lionel, MTH, etc.  I'd pay any price for them (after all it's unlimited funds!).  I would have a replica of the Mission Bay and Bayshore roundhouses custom made.

 

Oh...what a wonderful dream...

 

  Matt 

Hello guys and gals..........

 

unlimited funds hummmmmmmm,  we buy house, nice car 69' Hemi GTX, 70'VW bug, 2 trucks, a set of O scale brass heavyweights to go with my S.F.5011 and house full of furniture all paid in cash. 

 

the woman who loves the S.F.5011,2678

Tiffany

I would move to Hawaii, build a custom home on the beach, construct a huge G scale layout surrounding the house and have one floor dedicated to a O gauge layout built by TW TrainWorx.  The rest of the money goes to Mai Tia's. 

 

Steve, Lady and Tex

All you folks are thinkin' small.

Unlimited funds?

I would buy the Union Pacific, build a new New York Central Hudson,

the GG1's would run again . . . "How am I doin'?"

 

Scrapiron Scher

Wow, Steve, I like your idea. Would have to be on Maui. Scale Rail Don has good taste.

If that was the case for me I would wind back the clock and buy Madison Hardware. I think there would have been more than enough there to keep me busy for the rest of my life.

I'm with him, but a fallen flag would rise again and a Zephry and golden excursion train would run all the time, cross country and back{and I'd be on either of them}....then I might buy one of those fancy ps2 engines to run on the real trains.

No.  If I had unlimited funds I would have a bigger layout, but I feel that I had a responsibility to support organizations that help those less fortunate, blowing it all on trains would be pretty selfish.

What TMack said. Unlimited funds spent only on toy trains would be a waste of an opportunity to do good for those less fortunate. Although there is always more in need than resources to go around, at least I could improve some people's lives. 

 

The older I get, the more I realize that the pursuit of only material things is not a very good use of money. 

 

I have more than enough toy trains now. 

 

Paul Goodness

There would definitely be a Layout on the 400 foot Yacht somewhere.

Quadruple-headed Reading T-1s everywhere.

 

You're doing well.  And I'm with you - and I'd sort of like to have a working H7, an ATSF 2900 Northern, and set of Warbonnet F3s, too.

 

And I've also always wanted a 1:1 scale model of the battleship Bismarck.

If the funds were available, I would buy a Chance C.P. Huntington and have it run all the way around the farm! that would be 30 acres of fun!

Yep - build a NYC Hudson, no contest (OK, three: plain and Century and ESE streamlined).

Then a Niagara.

 

Then a ship to Mars, then a Duesenberg SSJ, then a Unicorn, then - wait, who's there? No, don't...! 

Buy UP 3985, and get it running!

This is a test to see if I can respond to this post?

Original post would not go through, although others responding to other sites did.

So this will be MUCH abbreviated.  Just a long list of cars prior to 1940, many the

general public have not heard of, the lease of a car to spend a few months in Europe,

the reacquisition of family farms to store them,  my own train company to build all

the O 3R items I want, my own automobile company to build the cars I want, to

fill those large gaps, too,  the review of tax and laws of various European countries for a second home, and a large building for a business school on a college campus, named after my parents and grandparents.   Oops, does that sign say "Egress"?  It must be

the way out of Fantasyland.

No that's what I'm talkin' 'bout.