I started a new job after Easter, and the big lockdown modelling push basically ran into the sands in May and June. But the sale of my late mother's house has now been completed;, and a long-overdue attempt to reduce the chaos of the study has taken place. Out went a large broken computer desk and the very old desktop it housed , and in came a small computer trolley; the office chair moved from the sitting room to the study, the study chair went in the bedroom, and a broken chair from the bedroom went to the tip. 

As a follow up, three new shelves went up on the wall that had just been cleared, giving me an extra 12' run of shelving. To be honest, it would probably take almost the same again finally to clear all the build-up of books and magazines in the flat, but the study is now a lot better than it was, so is the rest of the flat, and a great many things are now readily to hand that weren't.

The new shelves are set at a level to clear the proposed OO9 layout I have been evolving here - Dogger Light Railway   However.... an 18" boxed diorama will severely compromise the new minimalist laptop workstation and drive it well back into the (narrow) room. The curve at one end looks really rather tight with a Lynton & Barnstaple coach.  All in all - possible, but cramped and awkward. 

I've decided that no final decisions will be taken until at least next Spring. I have a lot of other things to sort out before taking on the big commitment of a new layout project. The possibility of moving from a flat to a house using the legacy also needs to be considered , but I am taking no decisions on that front either until next summer, pending some corporate developments at work. 

And in the course of finding homes for piles of stuff, a copy of Loco-Revue dated Septembre 2017 turned up. I read it carefully - there were several articles on a compact modern(ish) wagon-works layout in HO. Total footprint 180 cm x 45cm (interesting to see the French still think in imperial underneath - that's in practice 6' x 18") 

The prototypes shown in France can be as simple as a 3 road steel shed , with an additional siding on either side, plus a connection to the SNCF system.

Such prototypes do and have existed in Britain. The wagon works opposite the island platform at Peterborough station comes immediately to mind. Ipswich wagon works closed in the early 80s, but there are other facilities around Britain - probably rather larger , although I haven't seen photos of them. In short , unlike the entirely fictional "Any TOC TMD " layouts we saw around shows before the pandemic,  there is an actual credible basis for transplanting this kind of facility to  a British setting. Such a wagon works  also offers a plausible scenario for shunting large modern wagons singly, in a modest space, without the need to accomodate lengthy block trains. This is very promising.

I have some bits of modern N in store, which spiralled out of being given a presentation Dapol 66/5. Halve the dimensions in the article and you are at 3' x 9". If the wall above the workstation and below the shelves is problematic, what about about the wall on the right hand side? There's now 3' clear on that side before you reach the pile of boxed stuff with forlorn forgotten Tramlink boxed on top of it.

It's at this point that the difficulties start surfacing. For starters, British N is 59% of HO. That immediately takes you up to 3'6". x 10.5"   A class 66 in N is 15cm long. A Dapol Cargowaggon bogie van is only fractionally shorter. Just those two  together therefore come to 30cm , which is longer than the fiddle siding as drawn. And either is about as long as the headshunt at the other end, if not fractionally longer. But you would also have to fit a shunter into the headshunt, otherwise you can't operate at all. A Farish 04 is 6.5cm long....

And since the N gauge locos I  have are 2 x Freightliner 66s, a Freightliner 57, and an 04,  and the rolling stock includes an IWA , a VGA and a curtain sider   any N gauge layout needs to accomodate these vehicles. If it doesn't use  the stock I already have there's not a lot of point doing it.

You suddenly realise that short diesel locos like Rats and 20s disappeared a long time ago.

My calculations suggested I'd need at least 3'7" , which is starting to intrude significantly along that wall. That would allow a fiddle yard 33.5cm long , which would just take a 57 + 2 wagons, or at a pinch a 33 + 3 wagons (A Class 33, the shortest mainline diesel loco still in traffic in the 21st century,  is 10.5cm long). Peco short radius points in N are 123mm long. In contrast the layout in Loco Revue manages 3 wagon trains with an assortment of shunters used in the works

Hmmm. Not quite so simple. And none of this would accomodate my FEA twin-set. It's a bit awkward if your wagon works handles exclusively Freightliner locos, but no container flats ever appear.

Any layout  would use Peco code 55 track. There's no reason to use anything coarser, and pointwork on a shunting layout ought to be live frog. (N gauge actually equates to 4' 4.5" gauge - closer to scale than OO, but still not quite there . However nobody ever seems to notice this.) It would be DC, because none of the locos I have are plug-and-play for DCC, and I don't fancy the hassle and extra expense of trying to fit decoders. I have a perfectly serviceable Gaugemaster 100M and a Combi in the cupboard to run this - solenoid motors could be used.

There are certainly issues. But there are also genuine possibilities, and such a project would use stock I already have which doesn't currently have an obvious use