After some deliberation I've finally settled on what I think is a suitable trackplan to capture what I am looking for.

The layout is nominally based "early 80's", somewhere in SW England. It draws a lot of inspiration from Chard Junction, although very little of the actual prototype location can be seen!

The scenic area is 12ft long x 2ft 6 wide, accommodated on three 4ft x 2ft 6" boards made using standard construction methods that I won't bother to detail.

It is essentially a terminus station, with an industrial facility (at this moment a dairy, but that's dependent on being able to source suitable tank wagons or modify existing ones into the "TMV" variant.

The trackplan is based on an 'island' arrangement, with a main platform of approx 4ft 6" length, and a "bay" of around 3ft length. Predominantly passenger services (when suitable stock is obtained) will run into the main platform, with DMU's simply reversing out, or a loco-hauled replacement service reversing to drop the carriages into the run-round loop, then pushing the stock back into the platform.

Freight services, depending on their length, will generally run into the bay, with the factory's own Ruston shunter dragging the wagons (2 at a time) into the headshunt and into the yard. The uppermost siding in the plan is "inset" into the yard, and the lower siding just plain track, similar to that at Chard Junction. Chard Junction's Ruston was 'main line certified' for the immediate area, and I believe somewhere in the annals of history it ventured about a mile down towards Axminster to rescue a failed train and drag it into Chard Junction's (now disused) station - although I can't find a reference to that at the time.

The "front" of the layout is the bottom, and a 4" scenic strip fronts the layout in order to protect stock from falling off.

The left side - black - is a road, with small car park facility at the bottom. The grey part is the platform, which will contain the Kittle Hobbies station kit which is currently sat in parts on my kitchen table (and will form a later blog entry).

I hope that this all makes sense to you, and I'd love to hear your comments, suggestions and particularly improvements.