Burlington & Missouri River Railroad An HO Scale Model Railroad by David Lotz Home

January 1, 2006 Move to Savannah

Late Summer, 2005, my wife Diana accepted a position in Savannah, Georgia and the layout was disassembled and moved.  In preparation for this, I started at the Southeast corner of the layout and started numbering each upright starting with #1 and ending up with #76.  Each upright was marked with a heavy-duty permanent marker and then each piece of lumber that was attached to that upright was also marked with that number, closest to where it was attached to that upright.  When the layout is reassembled, it will be a huge, numbered kit!

The next step was to remove all the track feeds and bus wires.  Once the feeder wires were clipped, we began taking up all the trackwork.  This was done with the thought that the move would be hard on trackage.  Once the track was removed, we determined where to cut the decking.  We tried to keep the deck pieces as long as we could and still get them out of the basement.  As the decking was removed, we removed the cross-members between the uprights and began stacking them in an orderly manner.

The challenge was how to do the helix.  Do we completely dismantle it, or was there a better way?  We knew it could not remain whole and be taken up the stairs.  With some astute measurements and engineering problem solving, we determined that by cutting the helix in half, it could be maneuvered up the stairs in two pieces!  Since the helix was an oval, the logical place to cut the helix in half would be on the straight sections .  This would also provide for the best place for splicing at reassembly.   It worked!

 The photos below show the aftermath of the deconstruction phase late in December 2005.

	This view shows the decking pieces stacked to the left, the helix halves against   the back wall and the majority of the uprights lined up to the left.
	More uprights from the staging yards where the helix used to be.
	Laying on their sides, the deck framing for the Mississippi River section and more  decking are shown here.
	More decking and uprights are shown here.