Tom, I feel your pain. I will be retiring in summer of 2019, and it cannot come fast enough. I want to sleep in, do what I want to do, and get into projects or relax.
I've been planning and working up to this for a little over 10 years. I had a decent sized collection which was a mix of AF-S, Lionel O Pre War and Post War, and Lionel Standard. At first it was hard getting over the hump of deciding to sell, and how much. My wife and I took a vacation where we drove across country and back seeing different areas, and visiting awesome sights such as Tombstone, Grand Canyon, Vegas, and more. It was then that we found a small ranch in Texas with a pond and trees. We were not ready to buy, but that was the instigator of the selling frenzy. I decided to keep two sets of each era or group, and my parts. It took me about two years of hard work going to shows and working E-Bay to sell everything else off. In a year I had enough to buy the small ranch for cash. I kept selling as we had other expenses such as moving expenses and buying a tractor, and paying off current bills. The perfect dream was to retire with no bills and no mortgage, just utilities and horse feed.
Picking out a house plan was a menagerie. Between my wife and I it was hard to agree on what we wanted. Eventually we found a plan we liked and went with it. That fell through when we met the custom builder for the first time and he calculated the square footage and multiplied it by his per square foot price. It was double what we were hoping for. Back to the drawing board. One of the hang ups was my wife insisted I have some sort of bonus room to repair and display trains. I am not really big into layouts, but it is possible as I've kept all of my track, switches, and control system equipment. After much more looking we found another plan we both liked. Seeing that I am planning on a separate 5 bay garage for the vehicles and a shop, we converted the two car garage on the plan into a bonus room. Its about 15 X 20 give or take. Its still at the designers so we don't know the exact measurements yet. We had them build in a closet so it could be considered a 4th bedroom. That will hold my work bench which can be hidden when not in use. I have wall space to display my goodies that I kept and a few pieces I have picked up since the big sell. More thinning is likely to occur as we see what expenses we have that I have not thought about such as a tractor, horse barn, horse etc.
This is pretty much what I have done all my life. I would get the layout bug, and go into it head first, then it would look bad or not run right or got boring and I'd tear it down. My biggest joy comes in scouring the web and flea markets for old trains. Picking them up at a low price and refurbishing them then selling them off. I used to pick up a lot of basket cases, especially standard gauge and restore them. But its getting hard for me to do much bead blasting, and painting these days so my total restorations will be few. So in that sense I will be cutting back, most other stuff will remain the same provided I can find stuff to work on. Eventually my age will catch up with me and I will not be able to enjoy the hobby. My back, or feet will give out and the arthritis will get to a point where I will be force to stop. I will not be putting together a large collection again. I will not have the funds, and been there done that. If I should happen across a great deal on something really cool or unusual, I'll stash it away.
Tin
