Home inspectors (at least in Australia) are next to useless and expensive. The one I bought a report from never looked under the house or in the attic.
How? It was accessible through a door. Nobody - not the seller, agent, himself or any other prospective buyers, or the building inspector he presumably engaged to check the place over before signing contracts - thought to look behind the door?
How can you buy a house without checking out the foundations/basement yourself or by a pro?
You can't comment like this on Hacker News, no matter what it's about, but especially something as benign as model trains. This kind of commenting is not what HN is for and destroys what it is for.
Please read the guidelines and make an effort to observe them in future.
Reminds me of an estate sale I went to one time. Unassuming place, one of those tiny postwar homes about the same size as the one in this article - but with at least double or triple the density of this train layout in the basement. The owner must have been a very thin person, as the narrow winding paths around the basement in places measured no more than 8 inches, and the widest parts were only about 2 foot wide. In a 900 sq. foot basement, there was probably only about 50 sq foot of floor you could actually rest your feet on. The rest was all layout and boxes of trains and train accessories of all sorts - hundreds of tiny pots of specialty paint, miniature trees, "grass powder", special linkages and wheels, and more. Probably most of it got thrown away at the end of the sale.
People have hobbies, but I can't think of any circumstance in which I'd convert my basement into a deathtrap. There was less room than those hoarder houses you see on TV (but much more organized). It was genuinely concerning that they even decided to hold a sale there open to the public.
Truly one of the more bizarre things I've seen. Also, the upstairs? Mostly normal - you wouldn't even know the guy liked trains.
Tangentially related, re hoarders and death traps, have you come across the story of the Collyer brothers?
Homer Lusk Collyer (November 6, 1881 – March 21, 1947) and Langley Wakeman Collyer (October 3, 1885 – c. March 9, 1947), known as the Collyer brothers,[1] were two American brothers who became infamous for their bizarre natures and compulsive hoarding. The two lived in seclusion in their Harlem brownstone at 2078 Fifth Avenue (at the corner of 128th Street) in New York City where they obsessively collected books, furniture, musical instruments, and myriad other items, with booby traps set up in corridors and doorways to crush intruders. Both died in their home in March 1947 and were found (Homer on March 21, Langley on April 8) surrounded by more than 140 tons (127,000 kg) of collected items that they had amassed over several decades.
…
The responding officer initially had a difficult time getting into the house. There was no doorbell or telephone and the doors were locked; and though the basement windows were broken, they were protected by iron grillwork.[20] An emergency squad of seven men eventually had no choice but to begin pulling out all of the junk that was blocking their way and throw it out onto the street below. The brownstone's foyer was packed solid by a wall of old newspapers, folding beds and chairs, half a sewing machine, boxes, parts of a wine press, and numerous other pieces of junk. A patrolman finally broke in through a window into a second-story bedroom. Behind this window lay, among other things, more packages and newspaper bundles, empty cardboard boxes lashed together with rope, the frame of a baby carriage, a rake, and old umbrellas tied together. After five hours of digging, Homer Collyer's body was found in an alcove surrounded by filled boxes and newspapers that were piled to the ceiling.
I'm not really into trains, but it would be great if one day I found a 1970's computer room in my basement, complete with cold water lines, 3278 and 3279 terminals, and some tape drives...
I'd be happy to discover a basement, even if the first thing I'd do would be to call the police to check if nobody went missing near my neighborhood in the past few decades.
Imagine buying a house and gaining not just a home, but someone else’s whole dream world beneath your feet. That’s more than real estate. That’s a time capsule.
The model train setup Daniel Xu found beneath the home he just purchased is impressive, but it has proven an even greater delight, given he is a train engineer and train enthusiast. Source: SBS News
Uh huh... fortunate indeed.
My immediate thought was, his wife discovered his hobby, and the money spent, and "No, it was here when we moved in!"
Then the news shows up, and of course, he can't tell them different, or busted!
The vast majority is probably rent/property taxes. With a distant second benchwork (lumber).
Half a mile of 2-rail O-scale track (3-4 mainlines in a 200 foot loop) at today's pricing is under $8 a foot retail. In bulk and pre-pandemic well under $10k total. Considering the budget his roster of engines and rolling stock seems questionable.
Outside of collectable Lionel. Even the high end, magnificent museum quality KOHS brass compounded steam engine will run you ~$8,500. While he is running diesel.
I can understand the appeal of mainline/realistic operations. O-scale has its limitations (normally space) but an NTRAK meet up shows more creativity.
After some further investigation, the unbelievable level of attention to detail (the shape of the individually modeled rivet heads, the overlapping of adjacent sheetmetal) explains the price of these models.
When my daughter was 2, one day I saw a sign for a model train exhibit in a strip mall. We walked into a tiny-ish hobby shop, and were directed to a staircase in a corner.
At the top was a huge warehouse filled with model trains, tracks, and landscapes. She was obsessed with the largest Thomas the Tank Engine set I've ever seen, and all I wanted to do was to look at all the different landscapes.
I would not be too hasty with modernisation of the controllers as it seems that most enthusiasts are happy with DC (analog) rather than DCC (digital). Too much determination to modernise could result in a broken train set since the project would be large. Restoration with no modernisation would still provide the fun, and be part of the owner's original vision.
What he was lucky with was the state of it. My own father was into model engineering, however, he never put his tools away and never completed a project, so it just took months to tidy up his hoarded junk, to find there was absolutely nothing of value at the bottom of it. If only my dad had completed his projects and left it in the condition shown here.
How would a buildings and pest inspection have missed it?
Or, maybe he found it during inspections, knew he would never convince his wife to buy the house on the strength of the train set alone, but did managed to convince on the strength of the house... now he has to sell the lie?
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[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 66.0 ms ] threadHow can you buy a house without checking out the foundations/basement yourself or by a pro?
wait
Please read the guidelines and make an effort to observe them in future.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
People have hobbies, but I can't think of any circumstance in which I'd convert my basement into a deathtrap. There was less room than those hoarder houses you see on TV (but much more organized). It was genuinely concerning that they even decided to hold a sale there open to the public.
Truly one of the more bizarre things I've seen. Also, the upstairs? Mostly normal - you wouldn't even know the guy liked trains.
Homer Lusk Collyer (November 6, 1881 – March 21, 1947) and Langley Wakeman Collyer (October 3, 1885 – c. March 9, 1947), known as the Collyer brothers,[1] were two American brothers who became infamous for their bizarre natures and compulsive hoarding. The two lived in seclusion in their Harlem brownstone at 2078 Fifth Avenue (at the corner of 128th Street) in New York City where they obsessively collected books, furniture, musical instruments, and myriad other items, with booby traps set up in corridors and doorways to crush intruders. Both died in their home in March 1947 and were found (Homer on March 21, Langley on April 8) surrounded by more than 140 tons (127,000 kg) of collected items that they had amassed over several decades.
…
The responding officer initially had a difficult time getting into the house. There was no doorbell or telephone and the doors were locked; and though the basement windows were broken, they were protected by iron grillwork.[20] An emergency squad of seven men eventually had no choice but to begin pulling out all of the junk that was blocking their way and throw it out onto the street below. The brownstone's foyer was packed solid by a wall of old newspapers, folding beds and chairs, half a sewing machine, boxes, parts of a wine press, and numerous other pieces of junk. A patrolman finally broke in through a window into a second-story bedroom. Behind this window lay, among other things, more packages and newspaper bundles, empty cardboard boxes lashed together with rope, the frame of a baby carriage, a rake, and old umbrellas tied together. After five hours of digging, Homer Collyer's body was found in an alcove surrounded by filled boxes and newspapers that were piled to the ceiling.
Probably not intended but pretty funny implication that train lovers are pathologically eccentric. Probably mostly true.
Obsessed, passionate, fascinated…
Is this the sort of thing that leads people to work remotely so they can have the space for their hobby.
Like one’s Lego collection, albeit just in the boxes because they’ve not had the time to put them together.
I think this is Brave Express Might Gaine…?
I'd be happy to discover a basement, even if the first thing I'd do would be to call the police to check if nobody went missing near my neighborhood in the past few decades.
Uh huh... fortunate indeed.
My immediate thought was, his wife discovered his hobby, and the money spent, and "No, it was here when we moved in!"
Then the news shows up, and of course, he can't tell them different, or busted!
"A businessman who secretly built the UK’s biggest model railway feared his girlfriend would dump him if she learnt about his ‘dull’ hobby."
Train-mad Simon George, 53, spent £250,000 and a staggering eight years on his 200ft-long project.
https://metro.co.uk/2021/12/07/man-spent-250000-secretly-bui...
Half a mile of 2-rail O-scale track (3-4 mainlines in a 200 foot loop) at today's pricing is under $8 a foot retail. In bulk and pre-pandemic well under $10k total. Considering the budget his roster of engines and rolling stock seems questionable.
Outside of collectable Lionel. Even the high end, magnificent museum quality KOHS brass compounded steam engine will run you ~$8,500. While he is running diesel.
I can understand the appeal of mainline/realistic operations. O-scale has its limitations (normally space) but an NTRAK meet up shows more creativity.
The clip of him using the knock-off Faller Grassmaster is kind of funny. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-Mcgp6Dtq8
https://www.kohs.com/Technical_Pages/Sheet_Meta_Detail.html https://www.kohs.com/Technical_Pages/Rivet.html
model train network
At the top was a huge warehouse filled with model trains, tracks, and landscapes. She was obsessed with the largest Thomas the Tank Engine set I've ever seen, and all I wanted to do was to look at all the different landscapes.
I would not be too hasty with modernisation of the controllers as it seems that most enthusiasts are happy with DC (analog) rather than DCC (digital). Too much determination to modernise could result in a broken train set since the project would be large. Restoration with no modernisation would still provide the fun, and be part of the owner's original vision.
What he was lucky with was the state of it. My own father was into model engineering, however, he never put his tools away and never completed a project, so it just took months to tidy up his hoarded junk, to find there was absolutely nothing of value at the bottom of it. If only my dad had completed his projects and left it in the condition shown here.
How would a buildings and pest inspection have missed it?
Or, maybe he found it during inspections, knew he would never convince his wife to buy the house on the strength of the train set alone, but did managed to convince on the strength of the house... now he has to sell the lie?