After years of accumulating N Scale trains, I realized I will never run, build, fix, kitbash, or touch much of what I have. (Isn't realization the first step in recovery?) I would buy all 12 numbers of an Intermountain SP box car release. One would run and the other 11 sat on the shelf. I have 13 SP F units. All DCC. What was I thinking? In a clinic I give titled "Introduction to Model Railroading", I talk about collecting vs. accumulating. I dabbled with collecting, but in the end, really just accumulated. I can buy that ____ ___cheap and kitbash it. Yeah, right. It was so easy to accumulate. N Scale stuff is small and easy to fit into a suitcase. It is easy to smuggle into the house. If the wife saw something, the response would be, "I've had that for years". My club gets first shot, then N Scale Yard Sale and E Bay. Thanks for reading. I feel much better now. Pete Steinmetz
Pete, look on the bright side. It used to be fast cars, faster women and rock 'n roll. Now it is N scale. N scale is cheaper.
De-Accumulation is hard but it has to be done. I have boxes of unit trains that will never see the light of day. My biggest fear? I'll die and my family will discard everything or sell it for pennies on the dollar. Arrrrrrg! Sigh.
Hi, my name is Pete and I'm a hoarder......LOL! This is probably true of anyone that has been in N scale since the dark ages, I think it goes back to the days when produciton runs were evern fewer and farther between and we all understood if we didn't buy it then we may never get another chance.
If they are all B units, that's a very good question. This a good cautionary tale of why everyone in the hobby needs to draft a shopping list with slightly unreasonably low dollar figures attached to each item. That way, it puts a break on the hoarding impulse and counters the "it's a good deal!" self justification.
Came to that conclusion also. Had enough diesels to run every train with 6 units up front and a four unit helper and all the steam triple or double headed with a pusher. More structures than I could possibly begin to use and even after thinning may still have an excess. Even my logging stuff has been in excess and I have even reduced the number of log cars by almost half. I have more passenger and express cars than two people need and that will get thinned over the next year. If I stay in the hobby and the same scale my future freight car acquisitions will be limited to those unique cars that one occasionally spots and not 4 or 5 of them. I already reduced my stuff from having two big storage boxes to one, locomotive storage boxes have been reduced by three. And I have eliminated three of my smaller storage boxes of excess stuff.
Anyone who wants to get rid of 'stuff'...I'll pay nickels on the dollar instead of pennies. Especially SP stuff (especially SP F units)
I did the same thing a few years ago. I'd buy anything that came out in SP. I had over a hundred diesels. It wasn't a big deal for me when I was younger to walk out of a hobby shop with 10 or 15 MDC 50' boxcar kits and MTL trucks and couplers for all of them. I had hundreds of cars. Problem was I had stuff for multiple eras. Eventually I figured out that buying whatever I wanted was dumb, so I settled on 1949, so I'd have an excuse to run steam and the early Black Widow diesels I really liked. I sold off almost all of it at a couple of train shows, and traded the rest with dealers for stuff I actually wanted. I still have stuff I need to get rid of...
Well Pete.... I've been looking for an e8b in sp daylight, so maybe someone following your recovery, can guide addict.... Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk
Let us know when/where you post your sales of items for de-hoarding, so we can add them to our hoards. !!! (It's not a sickness, it's my "artistic side")
I wish I had gotten all those 12 packs of SP boxcars from Intermountain now... I should have about a 50/50 mix of SP cars and other railroads, but it's about 10/90 now.
Gosh it feels so good knowing I'm not alone in this. In fact it feels even better knowing that there are some who are deeper into it than I am. Some of you really need help.
That's how I was getting when I was in N scale too, I think because it's small and doesn't take up a lot if space has a big factor in the extreme accumulating. It wasn't until I changed scales that I realized how much stuff I had, stuff I had forgotten about, stuff I would never do anything with. Now when I buy HO cars I have the higher expense factor to help limit my purchases and I think to myself "I don't need anymore XYZ car than I'll ever run at one time on one train." Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
