I'll start off with some history before I get into the layout. I started in N scale back in 1992 and was briefly part of a club that was building a super layout overlooking the Burlington Northern Interbay yard until we lost our lease. I began building a couple of small 2x4 oval layouts and was able to run trains but never got them finished. I packed up all of my model railroad cars and equipment and sold off all of my engines somewhere around 2006 I think. Well I recently brought out all of my old N scale stuff and purchased a couple of engines and now I'm in the process of building a new layout. I've been pulling my hair out trying to come up with an idea and I finally realized I'm just overthinking all of this. My goal is to run trains! I want lots of scenery and I want to get working on this layout to start building up my skills. This layout is going to be a skill building project and scenery intensive. I envision a lot of mountain rock faces, trees, and water. I plan on one industry, the Walther's mountain lumber company that I've had sitting in storage all these years. In fact most of the stuff I've had in storage just waiting to be used. I'm taking inspiration from Dave Meek and his blog, specifically His plans for a portable Thunder Mesa layout. The link is here. http://thundermesaminingco.blogspot.com/2015/01/planning-calico-portable-on18-layout.html Today I rolled out some butcher paper and began mocking up a plan. I'm going for a 3' by 7' space. I could shrink it down but I want big scenery and I don't want tight curves. I'll post a few pics of today's progress in just a bit.
I build a jig to draw different radii so I could figure out what looked best. Here is the basic plan, the far loop will have the lumber company. This picture makes everything look bigger than it will end up. I am working on a 4x8 sheet of plywood and the paper is larger than the planned layout. It may be hard to see but I've drawn a line around the layout outline the 7' x 3' dimensions.
