We sold our home earlier this year, closing on our new house in a few weeks. Had to tear down my 8x10 L shaped layout last year in preparation for the sale/move. All gear is in safe storage at my son's house.
Not sure when I'll be able to start this new layout build -- my CEO has lots for me to do with the new house first -- but in eager anticipation I've been searching the forum, trying my hand at SCARM, to come up with a layout to fit a bonus room that I get to call my own.
Room dimensions: 19.5 x 15.5 (roughly). Looking at my attached picture the room has walls at left, top and right sides of layout, with about a 6ft wall along bottom right. Opening to room is large and while not shown is at bottom. There is one double-window at top (not shown).
My layout criteria:
I'm a loop runner, conventional. My pleasure comes from watching the trains run and being as creative as I can with scenery. Not too much interest in changing train directions or tremendously big yards as I do not have that much rolling stock. I have a bunch of Fastrack from my previous layout but looking at GG/Ross for the new one. Might keep some Fastrack on parts of the new layout. Am trying to use as much of the existing room space as physics (and CEO) allow, avoid duck-unders and still make all areas of the layout accessible. I wanted at least two mains with curves as large as I could get. No slopes on track.
Here's what I've come up with so far. The greyed out areas of the layout are liftouts (or lift-downs) to allow for access to hard to reach areas.
For scenic elements I envision a mountain at top left and possibly a smaller one top right. Towns and industries on each peninsula, perhaps work in a trolley line. Stream and/or small lake somewhere.
My questions: First off, what do you think? What might lead to problems down the road? What design considerations are there to include now to avoid problems? What areas am I being short-sighted?
Appreciate any and all comments/feedback, especially as I am still in planning mode but very excited about getting started on this in the (hopefully) near future.
Steve