I am one of “those people” who save the boxes from locomotives and roiling stock. I have not regretted this as they came in very handy when I sold off most of my 1:24 collection. For the past 5 or 6 years they have been piling up in the basement near the layout.

This winter I’d like to finally implement my indoor expansion plans, but that requires a lot of clean up including moving all of the boxes to the attic. With Marilyn’s help I filled my Envoy with boxes then drove them up to the front door for movement to the living room. Marilyn organized them by size as she staged them near the attic stairs, then handed them to me while I stood of the folding stairs. Hard to believe how big that pile had become buying two or three cars each spring at ECLSTS.

As part of my clean up effort I also filled a large trash bin and a large recycling bin with old electronics and ham radio junk I’ve been hording fro 25 years. I still have a few 80’s vintage FM mobile rigs and a set of drums to unload then I’ll have room for more indoor trains.

Yea, I am astounded by the amount of space the boxes take up in my attic. The huge pile of boxes suggest that I have a really large collection of trains. But, I don’t think its that large.

A few years ago, I decided I needed more space, but was loathe to give up things that I was “saving” for projects. So, I decided on something safe, anything I had been holding on to for over 10 years went… I was surprised at almost 50% of the stuff went.

The trick was setting a “rule” and not making an exception. Saving $5 worth of plastic material for 10 years is actually nuts unless you have unlimited storage space AND a way to find stuff 10 years later.

Greg

Greg Elmassian said:

A few years ago, I decided I needed more space, but was loathe to give up things that I was “saving” for projects. So, I decided on something safe, anything I had been holding on to for over 10 years went… I was surprised at almost 50% of the stuff went.

The trick was setting a “rule” and not making an exception. Saving $5 worth of plastic material for 10 years is actually nuts unless you have unlimited storage space AND a way to find stuff 10 years later.

Greg

Using your criteria, I’m finding I am able to actually navigate my home shop (wood shop/machine shop) now and I never realized how many tools I had purchased over the past thirty years (I thought I had misplaced or lost)! I had saved plastics for bashing G scale stuff, pieces of oak for building 1-1/2 inch rolling stock and even some steel and aluminum scrap for the machine shop. But when I knew that I had not used this stuff in ten years, it all went :)! It’s a great feeling to get rid of it and actually enjoy working in my shop again without “tripping over stuff”. AND finding tools when I really needed them!

I’ve been a saver of stuff. Particularly material for doing pretty much anything around the house or in my garden railway. I also have more tools than I really need with one exception, a good band saw. Every so often I will clean house. However it never fails that when i am looking for a piece of wood or perhaps plastic or some other useful thing, it happens that the very thing I’m looking for went out in the trash the week before.

My wife and I went through a couple of cupboards in the garage last weekend, found out we had a bin full of every Christmas/ Birthday/ Anniverasry card from the last 15 -20 years, well progress halted as she/we read all of them before dumping into recycle bin.

As for train boxes I am on the fence on saving them, 2 weeks ago on facebook someone was looking for a USAT 50ft boxcar box, so for $35.00 shipping and cutting and making a box to ship the box, I sent him one.

A friend had a system , stuff goes into garage storage for 1 year, after one year if still there it goes to the outside storage, after another year, it goes to Goodwill , or to trash depending on what it is. I would like to implement that system but do ont have the room so it get looked at every few years and lately the hoarder errr wife is paring down things, so we are actualy gaining space, now if I could just get my working space in the garage to be clean and stay that way…

Dan Padova said:

I’ve been a saver of stuff. Particularly material for doing pretty much anything around the house or in my garden railway. I also have more tools than I really need with one exception, a good band saw. Every so often I will clean house. However it never fails that when i am looking for a piece of wood or perhaps plastic or some other useful thing, it happens that the very thing I’m looking for went out in the trash the week before.

Dan I bought a Porter Cable band saw from Lowes, and some better blades and love it, so far it has performed well.

I wish I could do that. I have some cables that I have been saving since I worked for Matthews International back in 1991. OMG! I have those cables! Inside those cables are coloured wires that I can use for my current project of putting DCC decoders in my fleet of HO locomotives.

Hey, thanks guys!

Now where in the barn did I put those darn cables?

It does feel good to dump stuff. What I find helpful is when I put something into storage I date it. Some of the things I tossed were dated 1990. I haven’t un-packed it in 26 years and probably haven’t even seen the box for 10 years or more.

I’m still having trouble throwing away some of my miscellaneous ham gear - like coax relays and the jumper cables to go with them. All CATV wire went out, I had a lot of it. Used RG8 went as well. I still have spools of new RG8 and several rolls of slightly used 9913 that I can’t throw away even though they are over 10 years in storage.

I just joined a ham radio swap group on Facebook. Maybe I can give away those boat anchor FM radios and sell some of my antenna stuff.

Boxes? What Boxes?.. I can honestly say I haven’t regretted getting rid of all my boxes. Almost all my trains that came in boxes are weathered or modified and nobody would want them that way on Ebay anyhow.

I am one of those collector types who keep ALL of the original boxes to my LGB and USA Trains locomotives and rolling stock. Every one of my locomotives and cars have one. I recently picked up four older USA Trains reefers at a swap meet and they were sans boxes. I cleaned them up to like-new condition, glued a few missing detail parts on 'em, then called USA Trains to buy empty boxes for them. Luckily, I was able to buy the last four original American Series USAT boxes that they had.

About a year ago, I read a post in this forum where a guy laughed at the idea of people actually buying empty boxes for their trains on Ebay. I kinda laughed to myself too. How ridiculous, I thought. But…I’ll admit right here that I am one of those suckers that did just that recently. I didn’t have any extra boxes for a couple of LGB cars I bought on Ebay, so I resorted to paying for boxes for them.

So…if any of you guys have any older USA Trains or LGB boxes that you’re willing to part with, please inquire within. They will go to a good home! (http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-laughing.gif)

Well I have to contribute a little to the thread drift.

Over on another thread John is poking a little good natured fun at my neat, clean, and organized work shop that I have posted pictures of in my new railroad build thread. I have to laugh a little too because this is certainly not my shops natural condition. Those pictures are kind of like a stage setting as the curtain goes up and the actors have yet to walk on.

What he probably doesn’t realize is that 2 years ago while tearing down and packing away the railroad all the things you guys are mentioning were done. Parts, things, and junk that had been stuck away for years and never used went to the dump. All those empty train boxes filling the attic of the shop went to the dump, well except for the engine boxes that is, just had to keep those.

Kept the empty engine boxes for packing the engines in for the move, yea right. All the engines have been altered/bashed/detailed so much they won’t go back in the original boxes. So I packed all the locos, and cars, in heavy card board boxes with bubble wrap or moved them on engine carriers.

The packing worked well, little or no damage but here is the kicker. I moved all those empty engine boxes up here and stored them in the shop attic in case I would need them in the future.(http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-foot-in-mouth.gif) I guess they are right when they say there is no fixing stupid.(http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-frown.gif)(http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-tongue-out.gif)

Rick

I bet Rooster just threw those LGB boxes in the garbage can today to prove a point (ya think?). Otherwise, how many guys take a picture of a discarded model train box hanging off the edge of a garbage can? Might as well just torch 'em and make a show out of it.

Go ahead and laugh, and I know it dudn’t mean diddly-squat to you, but locos and cars that sell on Ebay garner higher prices when the boxes are intact and in good condition. Same as most other collectibles. So if the ol’ lady decides to sell them when I check out, she’s gonna make more money from the cars because I kept the boxes! Plus, I need the boxes to store the cars away until I get some track laid.

Michael I keep telling my mom that. But if I meet an early demise, maybe from a rooster attack or something, I doubt my mom will remember what I said about why I am keeping the boxes. And even the stuff I repainted and re-detailed, it would be easier to cart it to the LHS in a box.

thanks to my location reselling RR stuff is out of the question.

but thanks to modelling indoors stuff, boxes (any boxes) are welcome base stuff for building structures.

thanks to Mr. Murphy and the fact, that one needs just that piece of junk, one has thrown away recently, throwing things away is limited to stuff, that stinks, or disintegrates.

the secret to (at least parcially) order are shoe-boxes. a staple of labeled shoeboxes needs less space, than a heap of loose junk.

(i would take a pic, if i could find my camera…)

Hi, for the old electronics and ham stuff, are you throwing away tubes, sockets and power transformers?

I’m another ham that works on boat anchors, and am always on the lookout for parts.

Ham radio is my other hobby, besides model trains. I have a bit of everything up to a couple 3.5 in gauge live steamers, aristo ls mike, and a Ruby.

Pete Lassen said:

Dan Padova said:

I’ve been a saver of stuff. Particularly material for doing pretty much anything around the house or in my garden railway. I also have more tools than I really need with one exception, a good band saw. Every so often I will clean house. However it never fails that when i am looking for a piece of wood or perhaps plastic or some other useful thing, it happens that the very thing I’m looking for went out in the trash the week before.

Dan I bought a Porter Cable band saw from Lowes, and some better blades and love it, so far it has performed well.

Thanks Pete, I’ll look into them.

Thanks pete, I’ll look into them.

Korm Kormsen said:

thanks to my location reselling RR stuff is out of the question.

but thanks to modelling indoors stuff, boxes (any boxes) are welcome base stuff for building structures.

thanks to Mr. Murphy and the fact, that one needs just that piece of junk, one has thrown away recently, throwing things away is limited to stuff, that stinks, or disintegrates.

the secret to (at least parcially) order are shoe-boxes. a staple of labeled shoeboxes needs less space, than a heap of loose junk.

(i would take a pic, if i could find my camera…)

Have you looked in one of your shoe boxes…LOL

I still have my Lionel Congressional set, a GG1 and five Pennsylvania aluminum passenger cars. Many years ago I had a basement O gauge layout. Some of my train boxes were stored under the layout. We had water in the basement and the congressional boxes were damaged so when I dismantled the layout I put those cars in a plastic storage bin, each wrapped in newspaper. They’ve been in my attic for twenty plus years. I recently opened the bin to have a look at how they were doing. They still look great ! I had heard that trains should not be wrapped in newspaper…LOL

John Bouck brings up a valid point. Weathered trains are more difficult to sell whether they are in an original box or not. Most of my G scale stuff is weathered or altered in some way. Once in awhile I put boxes on Ebay to sell. I’ve actually sold quite a few. The hardest ones to sell are the starter set boxes. Due to their size and not their weight, postage can be expensive, so most people are not willing to spend the money. Freight and passenger car boxes can be made flat in most cases so can ship for alot less than a box.