Northern Pacific

[ScaleCraft]

My good friend for 30 years or more, Bill Spaulding, has grown weary of the politics in the area, and has decided to liquidate and move to another state.
I have e-mail and phone numbers, message me.

This railroad is quite spectacular:

https://kalmbachhobbystore.com/product/ctt061201

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ny3LYYwV_-I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq3zKX1XdgU

The only thing not included is the All-Trol handhelds (antiques) as they are coming here.

Lionel, MTH (some with the DCS still installed, most with Dallee or QSI DCRU's) and who knows what else. 220 freight or more, 30+ locos, NP, GN, some SP, I think an SP&S.

Look at the videos, or the December 2006 CTT to get an idea.

[rogruth]

Yes, very nice.

[ScaleCraft]

I wired that railroad 23 or so years ago. Gotta have a mile of 14 gauge, plus lighter signal and switch wiring. Panel is 1940's state of the art toggles that are really nice, screw terminals, soldered lugs.
All the signals are wired to the Tenshodo/Kemtron to show direction of switches.
Functional Bowser turntable. All sorts of passenger trains, heavyweight and streamline, NP, GN, SP.
Switch machines are under table, with hand built actuators coming up through the benchwork, so none of the electric machines are visible. Yards are Caboose ground throws.

[healey36]

Is Bill liquidating, moving, then starting over, or just liquidating?

Healey

[ScaleCraft]

He says he's just getting rid, selling, moving.
We had a long talk in his garage and train room yesterday. He has been gathering some standard gauge stuff, that's what he's going to be doing to show off his old metal trucks and things.
Some of the equipment shown in the 2006 CTT is mine. We dragged it over so he had more of specific things.
My pre-Loewy NP F3's and 2555 NP tank cars for sure, maybe one or two of my NP short cabooses.

I tried to talk him into savings some of the smaller engines...and I'd give him my milk crates full of 031, 022 and 041 stuff so he had sectional to set up.

[Neil]

Probably not germane to the train discussion, but what state is he moving to? I don't think I've ever heard anyone want to move because of politics. Family, taxes, cost of housing, rural vs. urban, weather yes, but not the political climate in a particular state or city.

[ScaleCraft]

Taxes. Stupid legislatures.
New Transit Taxes now tax your vehicle tabs based upon manufacturer's MSRP as the base.
Adding tolls to Federally paid for interstates that have been there for years.
Failure to add any new freeways...ever.
There is ONE N-S Interstate and ONE E-W Interstate in the entire state.
Growth Management that forced us from rural county to urban city with those regulations.
Police who refuse to even look at bicyclists running stop signs, red lights, no signalling...and policing is political.
Assessor deciding what your house is worth.
We vote on an initiative to limit increases to 1% per year in taxes, but they get the courts to say that does not include surface water management, transit, schools...so it goes up HUGE amounts sometimes.

Yeah.

Politics.

Plus the main city and county (headquartered about two blocks apart) tends to vote.....silly. Rest of the state does not, but the population centre dictates to all.

Businesses are moving out.

[healey36]

Where are you guys? Washington state?

[ScaleCraft]

Yup. Home of corrupt politicians.

Like the last governor....."not my governor". She lost. Demanded a recount. King County Elections "found" more ballots favouring her, and she still lost. So, she demanded another recount...KC found more ballots favouring her..she won by 239 votes or something, and promptly got the liberal courts to order all recounts stopped.

It goes on and on.

Oso Landslide. Snohomish county executive. Mayors (don't get me started on Murray).
Seattle..they decided since they want everyone to conform to Agenda 21 and take busses and trains (even though the trains won't really DO anything for 15-20 years) they changed development rules and no longer require ANY parking for new developments..none.

They decided thy needed to be bicycle friendly so they took 4-lane roads in downtown Seattle, painted the outer lanes green and made the whole lane a bike lane. Now it's a major two-lane road through Seattle and nobody wants to go there anymore.

Hwy 99 tunnel.
The 1950 era viaduct is going bad fast. It replaced the waterfront Alaskan Way and the train traffic and pier access by rail.
Trains are gone, no more pier traffic, but they levy themselves into a new tunnel ("Bertha") that has failed, is way over budget, way over time....and it's waterfront, in old fill, below sea level...and the next earthquake, what is going to happen, and how many will drown? All they had to do was put it back on the surface like it was, but no.....and now Seattle wants the State (and the rest of us) to pay cost overruns.

Did I talk about WSDOT?
Morons.

[rogruth]

Dave,
How about showing us some more of your layout and stuff?
It has been quite a while since you have.
I also remember that you did some transformations on some
Lionel locos to make them more realistic. Sure would like
to hear more about that.

[healey36]

Well tell him not to move ro Maryland...this state would be a sore replacement.

[robert.]

Well tell him not to move ro Maryland...this state would be a sore replacement.

Throw pa. Onto that list of stay away. That want tolls on rt. 80. It's a nice layout. I hope your friend gave it a lot of thougt. We're all on the same ship just in different cabins

[Rufus T. Firefly]

...this state would be a sore replacement.

I am unaware of any state w/o flaws of some sort to every individual. I have looked into many as a place to retire to and all fail in some capacity.

What might be perfection to some is hell to others....

[chuck]

Washington State and Oregon are suffering from migration of folks in California to what they perceive as a "better" place. The real problem is that they are in effect bringing those same problems they are trying to escape with them. As others have pointed out this is true of more and more states and it becomes a case of picking your poison and learning to live with it.

Michigan has no toll roads and pretty soon we won't have ANY roads because no one is willing to pay for maintenance. We have the highest gas tax of any great lake state but the money is diverted to try to pay for education because the state shifted/shielded property taxes from being used to pay for local services like police/fire/schools. These were supposed to be funded by "revenue sharing" from the state coffers which would be funded by the gasoline tax. Whenever people stop buying gasoline there is no revenue to share. Because of amendment's that were codified into the state constitution it is almost impossible for a local unit to raise their local taxes even if they wanted to. The state government complains about issues of federal control/interference but has no problem doing the same to local units.

At the moment we have low property,sales, and even income taxes but it's at the expense of core services at almost all levels. The house of cards hasn't collapsed yet but the table it's resting on is in really bad shape. I'd scratch Michigan of the "move to" list as well.

[healey36]

One of the great travesties in Maryland was the tobacco tax. This was supposed to go to state health programs with the idea it would offset the cost of caring for the chronically ill, primarily smoking-related. Instead it has gone everywhere but health-care, to a point where it is now treated as just one more piece of the general fund. Same can be said for our gasoline tax. The corruption at the top of our state legislature is legendary...

Well, I hope Bill finds peace wherever he goes. I tend to agree with Rufus - every state has its issues, some more than others.