Petition to Abandon the Line

I had the pleasure of hosting an open house for the NMRA Potomac Division last Saturday. Considering this was the nicest weekend weather-wise we've had in about a month, I was pleasantly surprised by how many members (36 in total, according to the sign-in sheet) stopped by to see the railroad.
John Paganoni manned the check in desk upstairs, which allowed Christine to escape. Stic ran the trains back and forth (and back and forth). He seemed to be having a good time. Beauregard and Molly opted to go to Doggie Day Care for the afternoon, although they did have a chance to visit with Stic when they got home.

Just before the open house I posted the following notice on the layout fascia -

This layout's days are numbered - in fact I spent some time yesterday putting cars and locomotives back in their boxes, in preparation for the scrapper's train that is expected to show up sometime next week. I'll start by removing the around the walls portion of the layout, keeping the peninsula in place for a short while longer in order to have it evaluated for the NMRA Scenery Merit Award.

While some consideration was given to salvaging portions of the railroad, it seems much more logical to simply clean sheet the thing. So, with the exception of Williams Creek, which is a small section on it's own framework, the rest of the layout will be broken down to its basic components - with a lot of it going to the curb.