Three pictures on Craigslist. That's what this first post is about:
These three pictures were enough to make me do something I had never done before in my life; Make a large purchase online and sight unseen! I had been searching for a vintage camper on Craigslist for awhile, ever expanding farther and farther from the Denver area. A search of the Lincoln Nebraska area resulted in a recently posted 1960 Layton trailer about an hour south of there in Jansen.
There were no photos of the interior. I wasn't too concerned about that, as I was planning on totally gutting it and starting from scratch. If the interior turned out to be nice, then that was an added bonus and would save a lot of work. A phone conversation with the seller was enough to take a leap of faith, and purchase it for a great price over the phone.
Its an 8 hour drive to get there. But I learned from past experience that when something comes up, you better jump on it and go, or regret it later. So the next day, my Border Collie Beau (my Aussie Roper stayed home to attend to his own blog) and I were off on our very own adventure. Nebraska here we come! Stay tuned...
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| Beau's enthusiasm diminished after the first two hours of windshield time. |
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| A sign that all will be well? We passed this Shasta? eastbound on I-70, somewhere in Kansas. |
You should have stayed with C&S narrow gauge model railroads.You WILL have to gut the thing and start over from scratch.What ever you paid for it,it will be three times what it is actually worth.It will monopolize your time and you will wish you were working on the railroad.
ReplyDeleteLol Robert! Actually, having been in the hobby my whole life, it’s just the opposite. Flip your comment around and:
Delete“With C&S narrow gauge model railroads, You WILL have to gut the thing and start over from scratch. What ever you paid for it, it will be three times what it is actually worth. It will monopolize your time and you will wish you were working on something else.”
You obviously haven’t done your research about vintage travel trailers. Besides, if you’d just step outside, you’ll see there is more to life than a vest full of patches with a flashing crossbucks pin. Roper doesn’t discriminate and will take good care of you over on the C&Sn3 (-;
No research but having been acquainted with a couple of 'vintage travel trailers' in my past you can tell by my post I'm not real fond of them.In the summer of 1985 my dad and I spent most of our spare time replacing rotted out wood under the skin of his old Serro Scotty.Later on I bought an old camper trailer that on the surface looked good but after I got it on the road it was real hard pulling and not near worth what I payed for it.Actually I spend more time outside than in,and not that much time model railroading.I do however spend about 15-30 min.almost every day running the small On3 layout I have.Good luck with your travel trailer.
ReplyDeleteThanks Robert. Your dad’s old Scotty is probably worth some bank now, even if it rotted away again. It’s cool that you got to experience that with him whether it was fun or not.
DeleteThere is a huge market for them now. Materials to restore a trailer are a couple pieces of plywood and 1X2’s. If you do the labor yourself like I plan to do, the return on investment can be huge. But I plan on keeping mine.
PS: Dickey is just a sleepy junction at the moment awaiting the next train to arrive when I need a break.