Melbourne man discovers extensive model train network underneath house

The foundation is still clearly visible, they could do their job despite the railway. And they wouldn't have known that others didn't know it was there.

Sgt_Apone• 1 year ago

Ours did up a full report with pictures. I also walked through with the guy. Seems like something they would mention, even offhand.

greenknight• 1 year ago

This is in Melbourne, where most homes are sold via auction (because of the limited supply)... lots of people are forgoing building inspections because of it. Wouldnt be surprised if he didnt do one.

Hilift• 1 year ago

It could be sold as an "as-is", intended for knockdown/ demolition and replacement, or removal. That's why the 20% minimum open space requirements for new homes.

emmelaich• 1 year ago

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.

nsomaru• 1 year ago

Why don’t get sued into usefulness when issues inevitably arise in properties they’ve inspected?

When you pay an expert and rely on their opinion, you have recourse

dpb001• 1 year ago

In the US the quality has varied widely over the few houses I’ve purchased over the years. I’m also skeptical of their aligned interests. In the US most home purchases take place with a real estate agent involved. An inspector that adds friction to the process won’t get recommendations from agents.

brunker22• 1 year ago

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?

paranoidrobot• 1 year ago

All the home inspectors I looked at (Victoria, where this house is, plus Tasmania) were all quite clear that they would only access areas they could find a way in. Closed up areas, wouldn't be inspected by default.

bluGill5• 1 year ago

In fact things like attic hatches are supposed to be sealed ane so even though seen the inspector is not allowed in the attic. (Unless there is other evedence of a problem, though they need to repair the seal in that case.

brunker22• 1 year ago

Incidentally, I'm in Victoria myself. When I bought my house, the inspector did the works. Multiple roof spaces, got under the house and had a look, full report with photos, phone call consultation to explain everything he saw to me. He even notified the sellers of an urgent issue and they had it fixed that afternoon.

I guess it depends who you hire (and whether or not you want to know about any issues, which is the most compelling reason I've seen in the replies so far for why this was "missed").

sandworm101• 1 year ago

Many "inspectors" don't even go inside anymore. In some areas, where it is know that the buyers has every intention of replacing/rebuilding most houses, I've even heard of "inspections" done without a visit. They check on google that the house plan matches city records, that services are provided to the lot, and that there are no buried oil tanks and such, but don't bother going to view the house in person.

danielheath• 1 year ago

The Melbourne real-estate market is _mad_. Prices (relative to wages) are exceptionally high and continue to rise, spending half your take-home income on housing isn't super uncommon.

Widespread sentiment that if you don't buy something ASAP, you'll never be able to - meaning lots of buyers skimping on due diligence to close a sale.

cjbillington2• 1 year ago

Melbourne property prices actually haven't recovered from their 2022 peak, and that's before adjusting for inflation. I believe rents are down in real terms as well.

Things have been crazy for a long time, but I am actually optimistic for Melbourne specifically - the construction rate is up and the state government has been decreasing the power local governments have to block or delay development. If this continues, housing affordability should improve. My main concern is that a change of government may put an end to it, but I hope not.

Some details about what VIC is doing differently in this AFR article if you're interested (archive link because original is paywalled):

https://archive.md/yeDxF

goopypoop3• 1 year ago

I guess the seller didn't want complications and the agent just lists what they're told about, wouldn't check for anything unexpected. Surveyors are commonly disappointingly trusting of handwaving and the buyer didn't have the experience to think to check.

A whimsical tale of dishonesty, laziness and incompetence. Merry fucking Christmas

mcdeltat• 1 year ago

It's really a shame too. If the realtor found that prime basement living space beforehand they could've tripled the sale price!!

(A joke but also not really because housing prices here in Australia are absolutely insane)

bombcar7• 1 year ago

What is insane? I’ve been staring at valuations so long that $1,000 a square foot in SoCal doesn’t seem “that unreasonable”.

Gigachad• 1 year ago

Most old houses in Aus are just assumed to be complete shit so why waste money on an inspection to tell you what you already know. All the value is in the land.

If the house collapses that's a good thing because then the heritage protections are gone and you can build something better. The property value probably goes up if the old workers hut falls over.

sunnybeetroot• 1 year ago

Whatever the inspector finds, whether it be $50k or $100k or $200k worth of repairs that you request as a price deduction, there’ll be someone else who won’t care about the inspection issues. It’s in your best interest to make the sellers life easier and execute the fastest sale.

bigstrat2003• 1 year ago

Only to the extent that your best interest includes buying the house. But if the house needs tens of thousands (or more!) in repairs, then very likely buying the house is not in your best interest. That's kinda the point of an inspection.

brenainn• 1 year ago

Not uncommon for Australia. The housing market is very competitive so being a nuisance as a buyer, such as hiring someone for a thorough inspection, could hurt your chances.

What inspectors actually do also depends on who is engaging them and how much they get paid. For example, in the ACT it's mandatory for sellers to have an inspection done. This will generally go to the lowest bidder and they will put in minimum effort, e.g. the report will have things like "Roof inspected as far as can see from ladder placed against the house" and "furniture present, unable to inspect area". If you were the buyer and engaging an inspector, and the seller cooperated, you could have them inspect as much as you were willing to pay them for.

tzs• 1 year ago

The article says much of the house is raised, sitting above a carport. It sounds like this may be the space between the house and carport, so someone checking out the foundations would be looking for the foundation under the carport.

deadbabe• 1 year ago

“Honey, look at this massive model train network that just happened to be in our basement!”

holografix• 1 year ago

Hahaha exactly what I thought!

goopypoop3• 1 year ago

No mention of the stacks of niche magazines though

goopypoop3• 1 year ago

Fast Railing Monthly

Long Rollers

Barely Legal Signals

Locomania!

Chuggers

Driver's Wives

Hot Steamy Machines

Whistleblowing Enthusiast

SMUTS

Country Tooter

Shudders & Squeals

Stiff Points Quarterly

The Linkage Lover

This Oiled Life

Footplate Fanciers

Tiny Tunnels

Dirty Platform Digest

Wide Gauge Wonders

Derailed Darlings

6forward• 1 year ago

Exactly! This basement could be an antique roadshow’s dream

alnwlsn2• 1 year ago

Side note, but if you're trying to sell off this stuff, you better do it soon. Train nuts like this are a dying breed. Probably will all be mostly worthless in a couple decades, along with commemorative plates, or the "good china" your parents never use.

Market is hot(ish) now though, or was a few years ago. A friends dad died and he had trains. We helped ebay all of it. Owned a toy store or something, lots of rare stuff (like window displays). We even had a guy buy one of the rare posters, return it for questionable reasons, and then start selling counterfeits. Even so, the grand total wasn't a ton of money, more within the "worth doing" category.

qtwhat• 1 year ago

model train network?! a network to train your large language model?

m4632• 1 year ago

Better scrupulously check keywords when hiring engineers to work on this.

"bringing it up to code" might also be as ambiguous as "engineer"

viraptor4• 1 year ago

"Done, it's all up to code, your house has been migrated to the cloud".

chrismorgan• 1 year ago

A relative who is a manager sort in the medical software field told me yesterday about hiring hundreds of medical coders straight out of college. Apparently that doesn't mean software developers, but people who have swallowed a large catalogue mapping medical products and many-digit codes.

liampulles• 1 year ago

Next they are going to calling themselves "Train Engineers"...

wait

adxl• 1 year ago

Serendipity.

Kirr• 1 year ago

Philip K. Dick's "Small Town" is found!

freeopinion• 1 year ago

Were there any Klein bottles?

alnwlsn2• 1 year ago

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.

tenuousemphasis• 1 year ago

Sounds like he was neuro divergent and his wife made him keep his obsession in the basement.

specproc• 1 year ago

Is there anything particularly "neuro divergent" about having a hobby?

Anyways, I doubt his wife's making him do anything. Totally normal domestic arrangement to have a space for one's thing(s), whatever it may be. Well-conducive to a happy marriage, IMHO.

I'm not fortunate enough to have a whole basement to play with, but my study's piled high with my books, electronics, painting gear, art and models. I'm thankful to have a space that's mine. My SO didn't tell me to keep my shit here, I was like "dibs" on moving in.

FirmwareBurner2• 1 year ago

Sounds like he was neuro divergent and his wife made him keep his obsession in the basement.

Men do noting but chill: "They're losers, incels, etc".

Men have cool hobbies that don't bother anyone: "They're neurodivergent".

Men just can't catch a break these days.

nkrisc• 1 year ago

...where else are you going to put something like that in a home?

themadturk• 1 year ago

I've always looked at basements as a natural place for train layouts (no, I do not have one -- neither a basement nor a train layout). Trying to put such thing together among the usual furniture, people moving about, possibly toddlers found outside of the basement would be nigh impossible.

nandomrumber6• 1 year ago

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.

randomtoast• 1 year ago

Cause of Death:

Langley Collyer (born October 3, 1885 - died c. March 9, 1947): Langley died first. He was crushed by one of his own booby traps - a makeshift tunnel of newspapers and debris - while attempting to bring food to his paralyzed brother Homer. Langley was buried under a massive pile of junk and his body was not discovered until April 8, 1947, weeks after his death, due to the concealment caused by the debris.

Homer Collyer (born November 6, 1881 - died March 21, 1947): Homer, who was blind and crippled, died alone of starvation and dehydration sometime after Langley’s death. Without his brother to care for him, he perished in the same house. His body was found seated in a decaying chair amidst the filth and clutter.

notachatbot123• 1 year ago

Where are you quoting this from? Please provide the source.

fatihpense• 1 year ago

Now I see the real value of games like Factorio. That kind of poison needs to go somewhere or it ends up in real life projects

ludicrousdispla• 1 year ago

I am certain there are more than a few Minecraft bases with extensive rail networks beneath them.

SSLy• 1 year ago

yep, same feeling when I open Against the Storm or Shapez 2. Actual digital crack.

madaxe_again• 1 year ago

Yep. I moved off grid and I now fill my days with “how will I unreel 600kg of cable and 500m of 90mm HDPE tube over half a kilometre of nightmare terrain and 70m of vertical drop with only muscles and mechanics in 37C heat, and how will I thread the fibre down the tube” and similar fun projects.

Man’s gotta man. At least I get to scratch the systems itch and get fit at the same time.

fnordpiglet• 1 year ago

“Mostly normal - you wouldn’t even know the guy liked trains.”

Probably not intended but pretty funny implication that train lovers are pathologically eccentric. Probably mostly true.

ahazred8ta• 1 year ago

"A Gentle Madness" is a 584pp comprehensive history of book collectors and bibliomania. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Gentle_Madness

whywhywhywhy• 1 year ago

How was it a deathtrap?

zeristor2• 1 year ago

“liked” I think that word needs to be amped up 7 orders of magnitude.

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.

LeonB• 1 year ago

There’s never a train when you want one, but when you don’t they’re everywhere!

astrange• 1 year ago

His love of rail started when he was young, through a Japanese cartoon about a crime-fighting train.

I think this is Brave Express Might Gaine…?

gonzo41• 1 year ago

This guy is so lucky. We all have to build our own. What a head start.

rbanffy• 1 year ago

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.

f4c39012• 1 year ago

having a basement - that's ok. Having a hidden basement - hard no on the property. And if the basement door was nailed shut or hidden - I'm leaving the house right now, seen too many movies, there's a victorian doll/music box/portrait with staring eyes waiting for the next person to go in there

pixl97• 1 year ago

Really if you find a hidden basement make sure it has airflow or it could easily suffocate you.

ByteDrifter• 1 year ago

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.

em-bee3• 1 year ago

a few years ago i spent a few months in the house of an old friend of the family who spent his last days in a retirement home. the house was a treasure of interesting things to find. he was running a business out of it, and there were shelves of left over products, books and old style clothes. the most interesting was a model train set that was at least half a century old. similar the home of my own grandparents.

b112• 1 year ago

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!

gadders• 1 year ago

Maybe he had to keep it a secret?

"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...

lupusreal• 1 year ago

‘I told her the truth and she was like “ok”. ‘But she has an art degree so she appreciated the level of detail and work that went into it. We’re now engaged'

Glad that worked out.

chrisweekly• 1 year ago

IMHO, the £250,000 is more "staggering" than the eight years he spent.

zeristor2• 1 year ago

https://archive.ph/2lZ7U

mykehunt4• 1 year ago

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.

The clip of him using the knock-off Faller Grassmaster is kind of funny. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-Mcgp6Dtq8

mykehunt4• 1 year ago

You don't need a warehouse to scratch that itch. You can run an O-scale GG1 or Big Boy in the living room of a modest Manhattan apartment. They look great on a bookshelf too.

Kohs GG1 https://www.kohs.com/PRR_gg-1_pages/gg-1_home.htm

Key Imports Big Boy https://www.brasstrains.com/classic/Product/Detail/054489/O-...

defrost• 1 year ago

There's a 15 minute World of Railways interview with him at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrjIgfk5C_s

and more, including moving the entire 200 ft setup: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=heaton+lodge+ju...

rodface2• 1 year ago

That price is astonishing. My modeling knowledge is limited to plastic aircraft kits, so I have no idea what I'm looking at here. I'm not sure what it would take to pay that kind of money for a model aircraft, it would have to be the size of a coffee table and made by PLASMO or an equivalently (freakishly good) builder. I assume that KOHS engine is handmade of brass sheeting (the detail and workmanship do look exquisite)? How much of the cost is from its internal componentry (I assume it has a high-quality electric motor?)? Or is this just what it costs to play at the top of the model train game?

rodface2• 1 year ago

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.

https://www.kohs.com/Technical_Pages/Sheet_Meta_Detail.html https://www.kohs.com/Technical_Pages/Rivet.html

darkoob12• 1 year ago

Funny some AI words are in the title and these days you expect every post on HN be related to AI.

model train network

bombcar7• 1 year ago

Now I’ve an idea for a Netflix comedy. Older gentleman with an extensive model train network and experience with Large Lionel Models gets hired as a CEO for a Silly Valley AI startup; hijinx ensue.

gwbas1c• 1 year ago

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.

Theodores• 1 year ago

This story deserves a follow up in a few years.

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.

superultra• 1 year ago

We need a Hacker News remindme bot!

nicman23• 1 year ago

the people yearn for openttd

Swannie• 1 year ago

Oh yeah... he "found it"...

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?

ljsprague• 1 year ago

I love the metaphor of migrants accidentally discovering awesome remnants of the peoples they replaced.

mykehunt4• 1 year ago

The article says it wasn't touched since ~ the 1960's. I see an old MRC TECH II powerpack (two button as compared to three - on/off, direction only.)

> This out dates me but didn't those come to market in the 80's? Too new to be old but too old to be new.
> Also pretty sure I saw a blue Conrail GP-40-2 in the background of the Youtube clip. (Not too up on diesel. Know more about steam.) but either way Conrail wasn't formed until the late 1970's?

mykehunt4• 1 year ago

Bump for the Miniatur Wunderland - reason enough for anyone into to trains to visit Germany/Hamburg. You can easily spend two half days there. Their behind the scenes tour will give anyone with or thinking of building a layout enough ideas to keep them busy for years.

Their attention to detail, not only on the front end but also the backend is incredible. My wow moment was their staging. Since the trains run for the duration of the hours they are open - they get hot so they switch between two trains for each line so the motors don't burn out. Underneath each 12-18 inch riser section in the staging area is a separate smoke detector. (~20 smoke detectors in each staging area.)

https://www.miniatur-wunderland.com/ https://www.youtube.com/@MiniaturWunderlandOfficial

Melbourne man discovers extensive model train network underneath house

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