Matias K

Thank you for the warm welcome as well! What I meant by being "creatively bankrupt" was that I am lacking any originality or creativity from my current plans... 😅 Money, while being a consideration isn't a "problem" and getting an NCB powercab or the TCS counterpart of that (LT-50 I think?) have crossed my mind since I have heard that adding a decoder can allow your locos to crawl much better. Speaking of locomotives, crawling and investing in a good one! I already mentioned this in my reply to @TravisM but I currently own a Bachmann J78 and Bachmann locos are not known for their great performance, are they now... Thankfully this one seems to be fine (in no small part to not having square bearings...) and I plan on getting one of the new Accurascale Pannier tanks whenever those come out. In addition to all this I have to say that you are completely right with @Wheatley, the Shed must go and make room for an additional industry! Also making a full or small scale mockup of the layout/track parts is a great suggestion that hadn't crossed my mind yet for whatever reason. Oh and thank you for all the great info provided so far!

Thank you for the warm welcome! Don't let my location fool you. I currently own a Bachmann J78 in BR black late crest livery so Era 5 steam in OO would be my main "focus" and while I know Bachmann isn't known for their great running or crawling locomotives, this one seems to be awfully good at it! I'm also planning on getting an Accurascale Pannier tank, either in Br black late crest or green with the "British Railways" lettering, whenever they get around to releasing those. And as you mentioned, it's propably a good idea not to try and set the bar too high and keep things simple instead, or at least more grounded. I'm still quite young and got many layouts still ahead of me! Here's my J72 with a custom coal load I made to replace the shiny Bachmann one:

Hi RMweb, this will be my first time posting anything in here so please be kind! So, I've been looking to make myself a OO switching layout but happen to be rather creatively bankrupt individual. My planned layout size is 1470mm x 390mm, just small enough to fit on top of an IKEA Kallax shelf. I have already drawn few possible ideas in AnyRail based on layouts that I've seen and liked alot, even done little modifications here and there to fit my taste more. It's just that while I could just recreate someone elses layout, I would rather create something of my own. Oh and while I could just make a simple Inglenook layout, I personally wish for something more with similar switching functionality. It also doesn't help that my knowledge around railway terminology and prototypical usage of certain track formations is a bit rusty or non existing. I know runaround is almost mandatory, but stuff like why loco sheds or siding rarely connect directly to mainline and instead use this weird zigzag thingy. (pictured below) What is it called? Is it in any way prototypical thing to see or just there to save space/create more interesting shunting opportunities? Now I don't mind if my layout isn't prototypical, far from it. Fun comes before everything after all! It would be just nice to know these things to make my own research for this stuff a bit easier. Here are some of the layouts I've already sketched out in AnyRail: Feedback, ideas, places to find switching layout track plans/info is more than welcome!