I've been 'concerned' about future track/turnout expenses, opting now for a 8'x10" diorama for our TV credenza to be displayed at Christmas. However, on a lark I stopped at at yard sale down the street. The put on huge sales 3 or 4 times a year (whatever is permitted locally) and usually there is not much to interest me so it was unusual to stop. However with my resurgent hobby I hoped to find maybe one or two HO boxcars or the like. As I entered the yard I noticed an HO caboose and my hopes went up. When I got to the table however I received a gigantic shock. There were 5 or 6 8' tables FILLED with HO stuff. Cars, locos, track, structures, boxes full of trucks, power supplies, on and on. Now most of it has seen better days but I picked 5 decent freight cars and went to the checkout. $10! There were storage bins and boxes of snap track. I know what track goes for on eBay so I wasn't particularly hopeful but I asked anyway what were their prices, figuring on a per piece price. After a little chatting, the guy said I could have the entire 10 gal. bin for $20. OMG, sold in a literal heartbeat. That had to be hundreds of dollars worth of track and turnouts! I needed a power supply too so went home, picked up a V meter and returned. I picked an old Life-Like blue pack, tested it and got it for $3. There is another one there and I might go back and see if it's still there. On the return trip I picked thru more cars and got 5 more for another $10. These will need some TCL but that's fine with me. Locos are $6 but without a way to test I passed. For now I have a huge stash of track to sort thru. OK, I went back for the second power pack. Everything pictured for $55. I took a flyer on the Santa Fe A and B units. The second transformer and the Santa Fe units were just $10. Worth a gamble.
That's great news for You! You just never know what is gonna be at a yard sale. I went to one some years ago, and they wanted a huge price for some HO stuff. But there was a Lincoln ideal arc welder for $100 bucks. They said it didn't work, a quick lift of the side door revealed the ground cable was loose. I didn't haggle just paid and carried my almost new welder home tightened the ground cable and a boy that little thing is a great welder LOL. Yessir sometimes those yard sales can work out pretty good huh?
Nice find. It looks like you have a layout to build. Good call on skipping the locos. You're better off getting a really reliable loco as some that is likely cheaper toy stuff. I'll be interested to hear what the track sorts out as. If you even got three decent switches your cost for buying the bin is covered right there.
Inventory: over 100 turnouts (98+ standard, 1 long turnout, 1 Y turnout), 150 9" straight, 310 11" curve, 40 or 50 short pieces, 2 90 deg crossing, 2 30 deg crossing, 2 bumpers, half a dozen switch control buttons, a trestle, 5 or 6 connection point track pieces, 3 or 4 re-railers, and a hopper and a gondola without trucks. I had to throw away a dozen or so badly broken pieces. I'm going to have to invest in new connectors probably. I'll just buy as needed. It's all dirty. about 1/3 of the track pieces look like aluminum (??), the rest brass. Did I mention it's ALL dirty. But I think I'll be able to clean it up as needed. I'd guess 2/3 or more of the turnouts will work if given new motors (I have a few coming coincidentally). Some might work with just a cleaning, but only a few had motors. All the track for $30. The other $25 went for 2 power packs, 10 (or so) cars, and a powered Santa Fe F (looks pretty good) unit and an unpowered B unit.
how about 100+ turnouts? Old and dirty but quite possibly usable with cleaning and new motors. 1 is even NIB. see my prev post for full inventory.
Let me know if you need anymore Atlas switch solenoids, I have a some I dont need. Not a 100 but quite a few.
HO? Yeah, the silver rails are probably nickel silver and much less prone to corrosion than the brass rails. When I was a kid I spent as much time cleaning brass rails than I did running trains. There are things you can do to mitigate that, like Wahl hair clipper oil.
took track samples to my local guru and he confirmed nickle-silver track and it cleans up nicely. prob 100+ curved and 50+ straight nickle-silver pieces. The far-in-the-future layout I'm considering has only 6 turnouts, 5 in front where manual throw switches would look nice with only 1 needing to be remotely thrown. In any case he's holding 4 NIB and a number of used solenoids for me should I need them. I need to sort the 100+ turnouts and see how many are nickle-silver (I know some are but I didn't examine them closely when inventorying the lot.)
