OhOh

I'm not overly familiar with the range, but given the apparent growth in micro/boxfile layout building, maybe some smallish industrial type bits and pieces could be good earners?

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Looks that you've got the makings of a very enjoyable layout, thanks for sharing it. Do your boys get involved with the actual build?

I agree, although should note that you're talking to someone who once, completely on a whim, ripped-out his kitchen and then realised he didn't have a clue as to how to install a new one, nor at the time, the £'s with which to do so I did eventually make a start and ended-up with a fully fitted kitchen all by my own hand. Mistakes were made, solutions found, plans changed, new skills learnt and a lot of pleasure gained not only from the finished product, but from the entire process, which I guess are all similar to things that we look for in whatever hobby we choose to pursue. Frustrating as it probably seems at the time, ripping things up and starting over, possibly in a completely new direction, probably isn't as rare as we imagine. I doubt that there are many layouts planned and then built exactly as visualised. Even the real railways were re-engineered from time to time

Oh absolutely I've enjoyed (the majority of) it, and have also learnt a lot while meandering along the way all of which, probably with the assistance of some size 10 boots, will be incorporated into a layout someday. Way to go! I can only speak for myself, but wouldn't be surprised to find I'm not the only one who gets totally bogged-down trying to plan perfection rather than getting something started for real and then letting it grow and change organically.

Having lost count of the number of hours (probably totalling months by now!) I've spent on Anyrail, I'm torn as to whether I find the "doodling and dreaming" either satisfying or frustrating. Maybe it's both, in equal measure. I also have a strong and rather unsettling suspicion that I've passed through square one more than once by now

That's a very nice 'rails in the landscape' look there, along with a good sense of depth in the scenery.

Ah right, sorry I took it that you were referring to the article in question.

Journalists can't be railway modellers? As to "Even the trains are in keeping with the era"; remembering that the article isn't written exclusively for those in the know, I'd take that remark as an acknowledgment of the achievement of also having modelled the trains correctly.

In addition to those not lucky enough to be able to listen carefully, the BBC News website is viewed by a global audience, so for many, English will not be their first language, and a fairly heavily accented English will be quite hard to understand. A lot of my English speaking overseas friends often find the written word a lot easier to take-in.

I solved that, I think by inserting a : before typing my location.

Looks to be a very atmospheric layout, packed full of interest. You have very lucky grandchildren!

Call The Midwife on BBC1 last night (17/02/19, S8, E6) featured a few very shiny wagons on the dockside. One I recall being a GN open. Wondering where they came from, or could they have been cgi'd?

Another possible way would be: Right click and use 'Add text' to insert a + or -. If you then wanted to change the colour of whatever text you've inserted, left click on it and you'll see a 'colour' tab in the toolbar above the draw area.

Might be worth taking a look at 'piano line' type layouts discussed here. That'd give you something on which to run some short trains using tank engines, but probably not big enough for tender loco's. 18-24inches is a bit wider than you need for the piano set-up, so you could maybe use the extra space for some sort of MPD to accommodate your larger loco's. Hope that helps a little.

Although I'd firstly have asked the retailer how they intended to address the issue of the faulty item at no extra cost to myself, I'm with the OP on this. I often used to adopt the "oh well, it's good enough" attitude, but a run of faulty goods, ranging from a TV to a wristwatch finally flipped me into sensibility and I now won't accept anything less than perfect and will chase retailers/manufacturers to put things right. Any that prove themselves unable to do so are simply added to my list of businesses that'll no longer get any of my £s. From the OED: FAULTY: Not working or made correctly; having defects. ‘a faulty brake’

I would follow this thread, but having never conquered my absolute fear of the Cybermen, I'll have to do so from behind the sofa. Great concept though.

Thanks for sharing what I can see could be a very absorbing website … more hours on the www! The "Railway Features" layer and the ability to highlight currently existing routes against historic ones are particularly interesting.

Stunning little layouts, all of them! Thanks v much for sharing them here.

Seems to me that your return to the hobby is off to a very good start, certainly better than mine which is currently stalled at the bare baseboard stage. Your scenic ideas give plenty of interest, even in such a small space. I like it - a lot

My baseboard has just had 2 coats of Burnt Umber (£1.49 at B&M). Although it's not obvious in the pic, it dries darker than it looks in the tube, but just about right to my eyes.

Assuming there's no reason that a fixed board couldn't be placed parallel to the elevator at main baseboard level and some form of automatic uncoupling incorporated within the elevator, then a point before and after the elevating section would enable an engine to run-round in traditional fashion. Alternatively, so long as there was always an empty track on the elevator, it could be used to move the loco to the other end. Or loco storage sidings at either end, similar to those already in the OP's drawing but swung 90degrees, might be the easiest solution. But I'm wary of distracting from the OP's more pressing need to find a suitable layout plan.

I wonder, would something like a vertical FY help?

Welcome Lots of useful info and helpful people here, so I'm sure Thomas will be chuffing soon :-) And if you're really not feeling the love for N gauge, have a look at the Boxfiles, Micro layouts & Dioramas section; you might be surprised!

Aspiring as I do to eventually (a very l-o-n-g way in the future yet!) building something of a similar size, I'm interested to see how things might fit so have tried to reproduce the bottom half of your drawing in Anyrail, mainly to see how the curves at bottom right work as they do look rather tight in your plan (and also to keep within the 50 free sections limit of my version). Just about managed it using Setrack curved points (ST244/245) and Setrack curves at 22.5" (ST235) and 33.75" (ST238) radius. Having heard less than wonderful reports of ST244/245's I'd be wary of using them in such numbers, if at all. I did try with Streamline points, but grew tired of jiggling things around without success. The FY lines are very tightly packed; hardly ideal as mentioned by imt above. I'm only just starting out with my layout build, it's tiny, but even for that I found Anyrail extremely useful, not to mention the myriad of other (so far pure fantasy) layouts I've used it to design over the last few years. As others have already suggested, do yourself a big favour and get Anyrail or something similar; it'll make planning and rehashing things so much easier and will quickly confirm what is or isn't doable.