I remember running some HO trains in the basement with my Dad when I was a kid. This was over 30 years ago. There were a couple of boxes of old train stuff in my parent's basement, and Mom was going to get rid of it. I said I would take it, not knowing exactly where I would put an HO train set in my house.

HO trains mean around a 4' x 8' layout, and I didn't really want to take up most of the space in my little basement shop. I thought about trying to put it under a bed, but that is difficult as you have to pull it out, and our bedrooms are tight already.

So I decided to put it on the ceiling in my shop, and then lower it down when we wanted to play, and then hoist it up when we are not using it. In addition to the HO trainset, there were also some boxes of US1 trucking TYCO track. So here is the project.