The pieces all laid out after we cataloged and photographed them. Our track layout below.

The end of an era? I popped the question to Quincy yesterday. So, any chance you are willing to sell your trains to make room for other toys? To my surprise, he didn't have to give it much thought before agreeing to the idea. Could be that seeing grandad's big set of electric trains and getting our own set out after we got back played a part. Could be that his brother is fairly uninterested/unwilling to play trains with him that is more to the point. Daddy is still willing, but both parents don't really like having the tracks left out too long (and good toys stay out for as long as possible!) because they block floor space to the bed, Pete's closet, the clothes drawers etc. Quincy threw himself into the task at hand. We grabbed the box of tracks, the box of trains, and tried to round up all accessory buildings we could locate. Then off to the office (biggest clean area of floor in the house) to catalog and photograph them. Quincy interestingly enough decided to group them for sale. I drew the line afterwards at BAGGING all the individual groups. We took over 100 photos! Crazy. Turns out we have over 200 individual pieces. Some retail as high as $50, most more like $20 for trains. We got a lot of this at great sales or was given to us but we have a lot of value here. Of course it has been well used and is dinged up and paint is chipped, but no matter - still good fun for the right aged kid. I loved setting up track with the kids and trying to use as many pieces as possible - we had some pretty crazy track layouts! We made a last layout after setting everything out. I'm including the pic here. Didn't use all the pieces (didn't even use the turn table!) but we did manage to go up quite a bit. Usually we use the duplo legos to hold up the double layers but yesterday we stuck with using only train pieces. Funny - think I'll have a harder time letting them go than the kids will. Of course I did mention that we can use the proceeds for Playmobil, Lego and DS Lite games - 3 of their current favorite things... Quincy was also very disappointed that my sale strategy was to pick a number and post the whole lot on craigslist.org. He really wanted to save a few of his groups to sale streetside! I 1) have NO interest in sitting down by the sidewalk for a few hours and 2) can't imagine he'd actually be able to make a sale, but think it very interesting none the less. He will go far (if he wants) in life. Not afraid to hustle (or try to sell things). Not afraid to try any new experiences that come his way (signed up for every camp I mentioned to him!). We went to Raging Waters down in San Jose today. Aidan was almost in tears at the thought that we had to go down a few of those huge slides - while Quincy was busy marching on ahead ready to try the next thing... They both did do all the slides we proposed (pretty much all that had inner tubes or rafts you rode down ) and had a great time doing so.