Here at Watts, we are constantly bringing in new inventory, often with rare, discontinued, hard-to-find items. One such collection provided Dave and Ross with an unusual turn of events...
Knowing that then 16-year-old Ross loved trains, Dave brought him along to help him pick up a new collection. The customer had a beautiful three story home with an elevator to the third-story layout room. His layouts consisting of five circuits with a circus train, trolleys, large steam engines - even a golf course - all surrounded by hand-painted murals. He was moving to a new home and had decided to cut back to running a single Christmas train set.
As they walked into the layout room, Ross was excited to see some locomotive that he had never seen before such as an LGB Brass Hudson and a Continental Express set. He couldn't help but ask the owner to demonstrate some of them before boxing them up. The owner had not operated his MTS layout for some time, but was more than happy to oblige. After a few minutes, he had the Hudson up and running, followed by the Continental Express, a Mallet, and soon, all of the locomotives on the layout were in full operation. Ross's excitement was contagious. After about 20 minutes, the layout was powered down, leaving Ross to compliment the owner on the beautiful layout he had constructed. The owner nearly teared up as he thanked Ross. Dave motioned to Ross to begin the task at hand - picking up the collection. As they began boxing up items, it soon came time to box up the layout.
"You know, on second thought, you might want to leave that particular train and cars," the owner said.
"Ok, how about this one?" Dave asked.
"Oh, well, you better leave that one too," said the owner.
"Ok, which ones can we box up?" asked Dave.
"Well, you know, you just better leave them all," the owner said.
"I understand, it would be a great way to help sell your house."
As they were driving away, Dave told Ross, "In the future, please try to contain your excitement when we pick up a collection."
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