How do you store your idle rolling stock?

I bulit a rolling shelf unit from scraps I had lying about. Not fine furniture by any means but it is handy.

I am a fan of the Glenn Snyder Display Systems.  $12 for 6' shelf that has rails for S and HO.  Easy to install and narrow profile.  Just ordered four more today after trying out my fist set of four.

http://www.gsds.com/

I agree withe the coupler issue Mark. I've stored them in their original boxes and have often found that the couplers were closed either before storing or shifting around after. As long as they can still couple, I'm good. Besides, I don't have the uncoupler accessory for my fastrack. I just use the "giant sky finger". In any event, these are really common cars so I'm not real concerned. This method makes it easy for my grandkids to pick their favorite car to run next.

phil

Glenn Snyder shelves. Will be picking up some more at York (assume he'll be there in his usual spot).

I suppose that if you can turn the trucks 180 degrees so the couplers are under the body that the concerns would be lessened.

phil

Retired band guy posted:

Mine hangs on a door........

What happens when someone opens the door all the way quickly and stops; what happens when the door gets closed quickly?

I used painters tape on the sides and bottom to hold it in place. Also, I leave the leftmost pockets empty as cars in those would hit the wall. The standard,door stop  is too short, but the other three pockets clear. Note that it's all hung on the right side of the door which helps with clearance.

Retired band guy posted:

I used painters tape on the sides and bottom to hold it in place. Also, I leave the leftmost pockets empty as cars in those would hit the wall. The standard,door stop  is too short, but the other three pockets clear. Note that it's all hung on the right side of the door which helps with clearance.

I can imagine others failing to think it through as well as you have,

All my stuff goes in 4x4x12" boxes from ULine............

Storing cars and locos with the couplers in the closed position could weaken the springs over time.  

I either store mine on shelves or in Liquor boxes that are divided ( usually into 12 slots) or containers)

Tucked away...waiting for a layout.

Ben 

Define "idle"...

Here is what I did: Glenn Snyder shelving trimmed to fit between Mianne Benchwork legs on the sides of my train table facing the room:

Items not on the layout are in their OB's, those without OB's are in AF repro boxes. The individual boxes are in large plastic tubs, some of those are in the attic, some are in an overhead rack system in the garage.

I use brackets and 1x6s from Home Depot. I've put many, many more up since these photos were taken.

I also use several pink shelves that were put up when the previous owner (who literally painted and carpeted the

entire house in pink) lived here in the late 1990s/early 2Ks. Not my favorite color but not worth my time to fix/replace.

I also have an extra shelve set aside for my Postwar Lionel boxes. Several more boxes have been added to this "collection"....

It looks to me like the shelves are in a basement, a luxury I do not have.

Most of my extra stuff is in boxes under the layout.  The rest is rolled in white hand towels and stored in plastic storage bins.

NH Joe

I built this under layout storage cabinet last year.  It has grooves cut into the drawer bottoms to keep the cars from sliding about the drawers. Each drawer can hold up to 28 cars.  Between this and my display shelving I have plenty of extra room.

Tom

Most of my unused stuff in in boxes or trays with dividers. 

I add spacers inside the boxes of my Pacific Rail Shops cars using foam core and blue or pink Styrofoam insulation board in strategic places to prevent the car from shifting and protect the fragile details:

Rusty

Like this :-)

I keep mine in plastic containers.

I don't have a permanent layout so everything gets put back in its box after use. Most of my Lionel, American Models, and S-Helper stuff is stored in cabinets and racks in another area of the basement.

One of these days I'm going to have to start cataloging some of this stuff. Most of the boxed items are wrapped in paper towels before they are put away so they stay pretty clean and undamaged.

I do have four glass-front cases where I have some of the nicer sets I've acquired without set boxes on display.

Mom makes me put my toys away in my toy box!!

In a factory box, packed in a shipping box and listed 'For sale' .

I'm with Papi. While I admire all the woodworking skills that have been presented as well as the organizational skills, I don't have any rolling stock one would consider collectible. I like to watch the grandkids play with them (with some supervision) and having them out where they can see and choose which to put on the tracks and run and maybe when they get older and can tell the difference, I'll get into hi-rail scale. For now and in our minds, they're just really cool toys.

by the way Papi, my grandkids call me Papo. We're not related are we? Lol!

Like this

Or like this:

Retired band guy posted:

I'm with Papi. While I admire all the woodworking skills that have been presented as well as the organizational skills, I don't have any rolling stock one would consider collectible. I like to watch the grandkids play with them (with some supervision) and having them out where they can see and choose which to put on the tracks and run and maybe when they get older and can tell the difference, I'll get into hi-rail scale. For now and in our minds, they're just really cool toys.

by the way Papi, my grandkids call me Papo. We're not related are we? Lol!

its a good thing we don't live down south. grandparents down there are called meemaw and peepaw

There was some concern about the couplers while storing rolling stock in one of those “hang on the door” shoe minder. As it happens, the cars can’t go far enough into the pockets to touch the couplers...maybe a flat car would have an issue, but the others don’t.

Like this.

When my present layout was in the process of being built, I ginned up a series of felt lined drawers to store teh most used trains.  The rest went into shelves on the walls.  Unfortunately, a planned move to a new house is on hold and the whole layout is now in a heated storage unit.

@johnstrains posted:

Glenn Snyder shelves. Will be picking up some more at York (assume he'll be there in his usual spot).

The Glenn Snyder shelves are great.

Also, the photos in this thread are excellent, and provide a wealth of ideas for storage.  Kudos for all the great work!

I use three types of storage:
1) trains stored on Glenn Snyder shelves for DISPLAY of my favorites - see attached pic.
2) trains stored in their original boxes and STASHED in cabinets in our heated/cooled garage. The previous owner of the house installed heating and cooling in the garage so it could be used as a rec room with carpeting, pool table, poker table, and dry bar. It's a great place to store trains since the house was built on a concrete slab (no basement) and the attic is too hot in the summer (in central Arkansas).
3) trains as "second tier" items stored on metal shelving in the workshop next to the L-shaped train room for convenient access: most pieces are for "grab and go" use as needed.

Years ago, I stored trains in my Rock Island collection in original (and some repro) boxes in five-high plastic pull-out drawers of roll-around "cabinets" with eight of them (along with O-gauge modular units) placed in a rented storage room at a nearby facility.  After a TIA, a stroke, and a cardiac incident, I sold the entire collection via Stout Auctions. I emptied the storage room and saved $1200/year on storage costs!

Mike Mottler    LCCA 12394

No layout room or shelves elsewhere yet, so:

Well, until I get the layout under control, it's pretty haphazard!  Once that's a little farther along, I want to come up with some display shelves and a better storage method for easier access.

I bough these pull out drawer units recently for rolling stock. Loco's are on shelves. Empty boxes are adding R-value to my attic.

Sidings under the upper level hold about 35 and 45 cars each, plus another 20 in the open yard.

I'm a cheap scrounger...someone threw out this steel box. I mounted it on two small Harbor Freight 4-wheel dollies and it rolls right under the layout. The cars are stored in their boxes on end. Similarly, the drugstore across the street had two new freezers delivered in wooden crates with heavy dolly wheels on the bottom. When done, they took the side wood from the crates but left the wheeled bottoms for the store to discard. I picked up the wheeled bottoms and put scrap wood sides on them just high enough to clear underneath the layout. Just one of these holds about 60 cars in their boxes.  I apologize for the pix--small basement.

Don