My long term, stay at home layout, Halstead Sidings is operated on DCC which I enjoy operating and working on very much but I have no where to run my Thomas and Friends Stock on. Thomas and his Friends are all DC and I have no intention of DCCing them in the long term future. So I decided to build a small compactish layout on which to run Thomas, Percy, Toby and some of the more smaller engines on.

I have set myself 4 rules:

1. The Layout mustn't be expensive to build,
   
2. The layout must be able to fit in an estate car for transport between home and the club,
   
3. When at home the layout has to be able to be stored under Halstead Sidings, and be able to be put up in a small space,
   
4. All trackwork must be code 75 with electrofrog turnouts
   

With this in mind I played around with a trackplan on XtrkCAD

I came up with the above.

Two boards of 3 by 2 easily storable and transportable.

The fiddleyard will be a separate board size to be decided, which will be operated by peco locolift cassettes.

I have even planned as far as the wood work to make sure no pointwork is going to be over any any joints and such:

The left hand board is going to have a curved facade to A) try something different and B) take a bit of weight off a board.

I have costed the wood at a local Timber Yard and the track from a few online sources and can say that I can get this built within £150 with I think is a good sum. I am also considering what to do about turnout control... thinking Peco mounted to the points.

With pay day just around the corner I might be able to order the timber, I already have the ply for the tops so thats one less cost!

Until next time!