ArcherOnyx

Sounds like a perfectly reasonable solution to me.

I honestly hadn't thought of that. I could even keep it as a removable section and take it to exhibitions. What was I saying about ambitious? 😅 The main-line points are all peco finescale large points, at least if xtrackcad is to be believed. Almost everything else is mediums. That is an issue. The idea I initially had was to have the board wide open underneath, only the railbeds, with a low guard to stop derails ending up on the floor. My plan, such as it is, is to build the benchwork and then test whether it's practical. Alternatively, I could bring both lines around to the fiddle. It would mean a little more thought has to be put into the design there, which is why I left it vague to begin with. A third option would be to reduce the scope of the upper station and move it so that the lower lines aren't concealed quite so much. I'm not going to be running big, mainline engines from it (largest will probably be something like an ivatt 262), so it can probably shrink a little.

As I said in my hello thread, I'm moving home shortly (back up to be close to my parents now that they're getting on), and the prospect of potentially having a bit more space, not to mention a bit more time, means the design bug has bitten again. Most of my planning is around a theoretical 3.8x2.2m (12.5ishx7ish feet) room. I'm assuming either a sliding door, or a short vestibule from the corridor like my current office. I'm not sure of the exact size I'll be working with yet, but I'm trying to ensure that I'll have something I can adapt to whatever space I find it in. As long as it's not a cupboard under the stairs. The conceit is this: A private industrial railway, at some mushy point between the late 80s and late 90s, that joins the main line at an exchange depot. The industrial locos can't run on the main line, while BR (and the private companies that succeed it) don't want to run their locos on the private line for insurance reasons. It's an aberration. A weird thing that probably shouldn't exist, but it does, because I wanted an excuse to run reasonably sized mainline consists and also have a fun bit of shunting. I've taken to calling it Soames Outer Depot, after joking back and forth with the wife about how it was going to have some sort of depot on it. Stage one is the main line loop. The text is a little small, but the upper branch of the line is the main line with a station on it, while the lower branch is where the exchange will attach. Left of the layout is covered by a scenic section, with a small town and a station building (not visible here) that sits over the top of both lines as they enter a bridge and tunnel. More on this later. The fiddle yard at the bottom is intended to be managed using cassettes, rather than having a big storage yard. I've left serious planning of it until I actually know what space I'll have, and consequently what compromises I'll need to make for it to work, so it's a placeholder. The idea is to give myself a nice roundy-roundy to be going long with while I save up for all the points I need next, but also to have a place where I can run those nice, long(ish) trains. Stage two is the depot itself. The core of it is the exchange sidings. Private locos come in from the lower left and drop into one of the exchange sidings, or into the marshalling yard. Mainline locos bring in empties (or other deliverables) to the other exchange siding and leave with whatever has been assembled by the private locos shunting. A lot of the time there'll be more than one partial consist in the marshalling yard, which have to be arranged and shunted into the exchange siding. The industry also maintains loco depot, which is kept here as it's more convenient for deliveries, and a small refuelling/maintenance/whatever shed. A head-shunt comes off the private line. I've run a few test trains on this, using xtrackcad's clever little train running system, and it seems to offer a fair amount of operational interest. Step three is why I call this ambitious. Now we add in a preserved railway that gets to run services on the main line. It sits over the concealed section on the left, filling in the gap, and runs under a small town, through a fake cutting that makes it appear to run off in a straight line. I'm pretty flexible on the final form of this part. It's left until last because, if I'm honest with myself, the layout could work fine without it. I'm just a sap for excuses to run all sorts of eras together. I'm quite certain my heights are woefully optimistic, but that's something I can work on once I've got the first part of the layout down. The great part about it is, if I get a longer room, I could lay the whole thing out straight. So there we go. I'm sure I'll be back in a year to lament my hubris, but it's been fun planning this one out. Suggestions/questions/explanations of why I should have my head examined are all welcome. Now I'm off to plan something a bit smaller.

I'm getting back into the hobby after a couple of decades of not having the time or space. The bug bit me a week or so back, when it sank in that I'll finally be moving back up to my old stomping grounds, where there will finally be space to indulge the dreams I had when I was younger. I've been planning out what are probably over-ambitious n-gauge layouts in anticipation, though until I know what space I'll actually have, they're obviously just fantasies. Currently also digging through all my old stock and seeing what even still works. I suspect I'm going to have one or two static displays once I get settled. C'est la vie.