The last entry here prompted some comment that made me go back and examine what brought me to the layout that we have. (trackplan in previous entry) After all, a railway is a serious thing, and no-one builds one without good reason, surely?...

As a father to 3 interested, but small, daughters, and a novice modeller, I thought we needed to come up with something to act as:

• a medium-term training exercise for me, to cover as many modelling aspects as possible - track/scenics/electronics/kits
• a round-and-round thing to allow me and the girls to see stuff happening without doing anything
• a thing with a terminus to allow for some shunting
• a passing loop to allow for two types of train at the same time
• something that fitted in the bay window of the bedroom
• something to allow for reversals

I'd always wanted N gauge if I had anything, and girls are so much more controlled and precise (generally) than boys, that I was prepared to take the risk attached to having small bits of stuff in the hands of small children.

So all in all, I'm quite happy with what we have, and I'm happy also with the random thoughts I'm developing about 'the next layout' which will now have to be all code 55 streamline, if not 2mmFS!

here's a view at the start of proceedings, showing the height constraint offered by the underside of the window shutters:

and here's where we were getting to some sunny day a month or two ago: