I've found myself in a very unusual situation, not bad but unusual. This past weekend I saved an older layout from the dumpster just because I couldn't stand the thoughts of so much hard work and time being tossed aside. The backstory: An older gentleman in a nearby town was getting rid of all his trains and layout at the request of his new wife. Seems that she thought that garages were for cars instead of model trains. Through a series of telephone calls and discussions I was told that he'd had no luck selling the layout and it was going to be torn apart and discarded. On the last weekend before demolition started, I pulled a 12' trailer to the gentleman's house, not fully knowing what to expect having only seen pictures and rough measurements. What I found was a very elaborate layout, stripped of all accessories but with older O gauge track forming two independent loops with hand-formed mountains and tunnels. The layout is made up of two 8' x 8' modules and one 4' x 8' module that form an "L" shape when together, making it about 16' x 12' at its biggest footprint. Enlisting the help of my father-in-law (what a sport) we carefully loaded and stacked the modules onto the truck bed and trailer, careful not to damage the handy work any more than we had to. This was no small task as this layout must be about 20 years old and made up of 2x4, 2x6 and 1/2 inch ply construction. The modules are really heavy.
Now the question: what do I do with this thing? Originally my intention was to save the layout with very little thought about storage and logistics, a true oversight on my part. The problem is that the 8'x8' modules won't fit through standard doorways and the layout is still loaded on the trailer. Another problem, I'm slowly falling in love with it! I don't have the space for such a layout and neither does our local club. Scaling the layout down will not work either based on the design.
Any ideas, thinking outside of the box, etc?