Wish I had 12x12 available
I am an obsessive layout planner, and one of the things I really enjoy is taking a plan like this and expanding or reducing it to fit it into different-sized spaces. Hey, we selectively compress the real world for our model railroads, why can't we do the same with layout plans? :twisted:
For example, I found this simple little N scale plan in "48 Top Notch Plans" that fits on a hollow core door.
I have no problem with continuous run layouts, but to break this plan up a little, I would put a staging/passing track at both ends, and cover them (and the main line) up with mountains, etc. Thus, one train could go into one of the tunnels, and another train come out the other end which would create the illusion that the first train went "somewhere" off the layout and the 2nd train appeared from "somewhere else" off the layout. You could run three trains this way, each of them serving different industries on the "exposed" parts of the layout. I know this is a very simple modification, but the difference it would make in terms of the "realism" of even this small layout would be significant. If you provided access to the tunnels, you could even "fiddle" the trains in the tunnels, making them look different when they eventually re-emerged later.
The current plan under discussion in this thread could easily be reduced to 9' x 12' or smaller without sacrificing much in terms of the concepts embodied in the original plan.
