The still photos on this listing are amazing, but they really don’t do this property justice. Thankfully, the listing agent had a video made. It is amazing.
This aerial shot gives you a sense of the scope of this mini-railroad.
Complete with a mini-trainyard.
And inside: more, even smaller trains!
It’s a $3.5 million train-lover’s paradise!
Updates!
Here is the home’s official webpage: UniqueEstateForSale.com
Looks like I’m not the only one who thinks this is an awesome listing. We were picked up by BoingBoing (first), Gizmodo, Daily Picks and Flicks, Neatorama, Well Done Stuff, and even Fox News Politics(?!?). Some of these sites even did further research. Here’s some of what they found.
Daily Picks and Flicks found another tour of the home by the listing agent, Jason Gardner:
Daily Picks and Flicks also found this great CNN Money video that features the property and its owner, Tom Miller, who built every train you see in these videos!
Daily Picks and Flicks also found a forum thread on myLargescale.com in which Tom explains his motivation for selling:
…it is time to let someone else take stewardship of what I have created. I intend to keep my locomotives and run them at club railroads around the country unless the new owner insists they go with the property. After all they are just stuff and I could build other and different locomotives.
Well Done Stuff found another video.
I’ll continue to update this post as people find more neat stuff about this property.
This is a glimpse into an amazing enthusiasm with a fascinating history – there are (or have been) national groups of fellows dedicated to building and operating these meticulous, riding-sized scale models – complete with train yards, gated crossings, every detail you see here – land and means permitting.
I can remember seeing some of the plans and such with publishing dates early-1900s, along with modern (1990s, I think) newsletters referencing sites and meetings, showcasing exemplary work, and memorializing elderly gentlemen retired from manufacturing.
Back in the day, there was an enormous reservoir of skilled machining in the shops of private homes and farms – WWII production actually tapped it for piecework as factories struggled to add capacity and find skilled labor on any terms it could. Add our fascination with railroads (and the great number of skilled retirees from that industry) and gaze in awe. :D
And a nice home to boot! Maintaining a miniature railroad of this magnitude isn’t my cup of tea, but if it were, this would be ideal.
Best way to get hay bales to your horses EVER!!! Woot-Woot!
But seriously… no one say anything about this place to my husband because if he hears about it there will be no peace until the keys are in his pocket, regardless of whether we have $3.5M to drop on it or not. (We don’t.)
Even without the train, though, this is a sweet site. Very nice interiors, though I’m not a huge fan of the French Provincial detailing. But, hell, I’d take Early Dorm Room Crapola if the back deck still came with it. I really, really want a deck like that some day. Sweet, sweet, and did I mention sweet? :D
@anodean: My grandpa was part of that “enormous reservoir” anodean. He was a welder from a very small town who serviced all manner of household items, cars, and farm machinery, including cropdusters, from all over his area from the 1920s till his death in the mid 1980s.
Technically he was in the Army Air Corps during WWII, even though he never left home other than for basic training. Nope, when regional military installations had welding work they sent it to him. Not only was this more cost effective than building hundreds of huge industrial sites, it made sense strategically – huge sites can be targeted easily, but myriad small ones can’t, not economically any way. And besides, for all intents and purposes these small sites were camouflaged without having to actually be camouflaged. Who could tell them from any other non-military industrial site? It’s sort of the military’s version of Wall Street’s “diversify” adage.
Anywho, that was Pa who, after a couple of decades of wearing the massively heavy welding helmet with the old-style leather straps, forever lost his eyebrows. But he was in good company – the Mona Lisa doesn’t have eyebrows either. :D
Hey look what made BoingBoing and Gizmodo today (click the screenshots to check out their articles):
I also found this:
Someone should buy this and turn it into a literal resort, like a bed n’ breakfast. It could put Sherwood, Oregon on the map. Maybe even the city should buy it.
@john talcott: That would be the greatest thing, wouldn’t it? It deserves to be an absolute shrine. :D
And thanks, Emerald, for the story of your grampa. My dad’s the last in my family; he grew up on a small farm among others whose fathers also worked in manufacturing. He says the companies knew they could get the skilled labor in the wintertime and scheduled accordingly. :)
Be sure to check out the updates I posted above. Lots more cool videos and info about this property!
“The mournful whistle and the peaceful tempo of the wheels, Yet downscaled to transport elves;
Gives pleasant nostalgia during evening meals,
But not china shaken from the shelves.”
The only house I ever purchase was a lovely, quirky, tiny house one block from the railroad tracks and only a couple of blocks from the railyard.
All the stuff you said was found by Neatorama and Well Done Stuff was actually found by me and is linked inside that post, the same way I linked to this post. Just sayin.:) Btw, love the website, will follow it more in the future.
@Dave: My apologies! I’ve corrected the post. Thanks for the link, and great research!
@JMixx: What a lovely poem! Did you write it yourself?
RE: owning a home close to the train tracks and yard… You’re a heavy sleeper, aren’t you. (No pun intended.)
@Emerald63: Of course! I wrote that little ditty, and I am rather a heavy sleeper. (I have a sleep disorder that is on the “narcolepsy spectrum”; I don’t drop into REM sleep without warning, but I fall asleep easily and can sleep for 16 hours. It’s called “Idiopathic hypersomnia,” which, appropriately enough, means “sleeps a heck of a lot and we don’t know why.”) The house was also close to the train *yard*; I didn’t know before living there that coupling and uncoupling cars and locomotives involves an ungodly amount of crashing sounds.