Storage Queens

Mine are all technically "storage queens" because they all go into their original boxes and are stored until the next time I bring them down to the club layout.

I only have room on my layout for two locomotives at a time, which makes most of my motive power "storage queens" at any given time.

All mine fit this because I have no place to run them.  Every once in a while I'll do a carpet layout, but after a week, they all get packed up again.  Now that I have a house, I'm hoping to change this, and then have everything out on a layout, or on the shelf so it can be swapped out to the layout.  I collect with the intent to run, not store or to look pretty on a shelf.  Manufacture warehouses and retail stores are for storage in boxes and displaying on shelves.  I've never understood why people buy them and then never even open some.  But I did get a NIB K-line Titan Big Boy because someone did.  And boy does it run nice.

I have nothing in a box.  Everything I have is on a shelf or on the layout.  I buy some locos to run and many others to display, but either way they are going to be out where I can see them.

Since our move, much of our trains have been packed and stacked. I have two walls in our 10 x 13 train room with shelving full and an 8' three-shelf unit that I built for the TV/Sound system and some books that have more trains displayed.

We just completed a nice large wall-bookcase set of shelving in the living room where the CFO's Standard Gauge Blue Comet now perches on the top shelf. 

At this point I believe that almost all of our motive power is out but several nice passenger car sets and a lot of scale freight cars are still boxed away...

No more room!

Almost all of mine are storage queens. Many await upgrade to TMCC. I also tend to run the same locos over and over because, well, I like them and they never let me down

I have 6 TMCC-equipped locomotives that I typically keep on the layout (except that right now they are stored on a shelf while I do scenery work).  I also have 5 post-war engines that store nearly permanently (Christmas, maybe).  These would qualify as "storage queens", I guess.

George

Most of my stuff falls into this category.  I can only run 4 trains at a time out in the garage.  There's no place in the house that's suitable for large display shelves so....most of the time my engines and rolling stock remain "in the dark."

- Mike