NEAT man, LOVE IT!!!! After the first divorce, I moved into my own high rise apt. and had rescued my old Lionel GG1 loco from my sister's trash can, quite by chance, I had given my old trains to my nephew many year previously....so it was on a shelf in the apt. One sunday AM I"m reading the paper and listening to jazz, and there was a add in the classified for Lionel trains for sale, it was approaching Xmas time.....so I give the guy a call, and flip over to his place...go down in the large basement, and I turned into a little kid again....he just sat on the stairs and watched/listened as apparently I was not the first guy to just fall over and gasp at the sheer SIZE of his collection, every damn thing Lionel ever put in a catalogue.......
SO by the time I met the ex/kids mom I had TWO 4x8 sheets of plywood on 2x4 framing in the living room of my apt. on the 11th floor, and a set running all around the living room rugs too......
rebuilt the setup in the townhouse basement, and yet again in the single car garage of the house kids were born in.....so that was 40 years ago....
but after the divorce the trains followed me to the 3 car garage in my back yard of my own place....where the kids and I built it up 11' wide down to 8' at the side door for walking/watching/controlling space, and it was 22' long....5 trains at once, 3 levels, all Lionel O gauge, and mainline was Gargraves track that looks like what you have there, except for scale of course......so in this hobby group I met up with a circle of a dozen friends with similar setups, and even a neighbor with his daughter same age as mine, he was into it too.....we had train meets about every 3 months at alternate houses.....
but when my arthritis got much worse, decided to sell house, my kids being early teens and into scouting/sailing/camping/boating/etc....time to sell the trains, turned out I sold at the high point of the market, got lucky and got my $$$$ back outta them...about 5-6 grand at the time....
a few of the guys in the group/club had trains running around the ceilings of the party rooms, one guy had 3 at once, and a friend who owns an old stone flower mill on a creek between Md, and W. Va. has many Lionels running around the ceiling in the bar/party area......
so YEH, that hobby goes back a few decades with me.....
