CP Rail Manitoba & Minnesota Subdivision: Going, Going, Gone . . .

From this . . .

To this.

Going, going—no, it’s not all gone. But part of the CP Rail Manitoba & Minnesota Subdisivion is. I took down the centre peninsula this past week.

Why? It’s partly because of changing family circumstances; my daughter started university in fall, and we moved her room downstairs to give her more space and privacy. She moved into my old office, which left me without my own work space. The train room couldn’t accommodate a desk and fold-out guest couch—at least, not with the peninsula in the way.

But the other reason was that, for me, there’s nothing worse than a finished layout. As I think I have mentioned before, I enjoy building a layout more than running one (even though I like running trains). Taking down part of it gave me something to do on the layout, and will also give me some projects as I reconnect tracks and fix up scenery. Plus, it might make the layout better suited for operation—we’ll see.

There are losses, of course—gone are a couple of signature scenes, and some scenery I was fond of. But I took many photos before dismantling that area; together with videos of the layout (available at http://www.youtube.com/user/jdl562000), I will have lots of memories.

Plus, nothing lasts forever, as I noted near the beginning of this blog when I wrote about Tibetan Sand Mandalas and Model Railroading.

What's always amazing is how little time it takes to dismantle something that took years to build. A few hours after I started, all the track and scenery was gone. Over the course of a few days I unscrewed the benchwork. The photos below show the process.

Update: Much work has been done since this post; click here to see what the room looks like now.