Ross, You might try visiting www.modelrailweb.com and see some samples of Kris Foondles work. He designed my Cape Cod Northern in O scale but works mostly with N.
Another option would be to look at 2x4 N railroads (or 4x8 HO railroads) and simply stretch them out a bit. There are quite a few good small plans out there, and with a little work, you could get what you want. Also, 2x6 is a little smaller than a standard door size, and Model Railroader has published plans in the past for N scale railroads built on a door. This gives a solid, yet lightweight base (if you use a hollow-core door). You're actually close by both me and upguy. Send an e-mail if you need more help. Pat
Hi Ross, I model in N and have limited space. What I did was look through many HO layout that were 4'X8' until I found one I liked. To convert to N figure a space of 2 1/2' X 5', don't make the mistake of taking half as it doesn't quite work out. The design I finally came up with (and modified) can be seen here; http://community.webshots.com/user/espeeman if you're interested.
Ross, I think that extra 6 inches in width would help tremendously. This means you can move up from a 9-3/4 inch radius to at least an 11 inch radius. Your trains will operate more smoothly and you won't have as many derailment problems. A few years ago, I built a small 2x4 foot N railroad, with 9 inch minimum radius (the plan I took it from had an even smaller minimum! It was very hard to get any trains to run well on it. I'd recommend as large a radius as you can get. Pat
I toasted my hard drive with all my layout design suggestions but I will post two here that I have re-acquired: 1) http://www.thortrains.net/npoorx.html 2) http://www.modelrailweb.com/ As suggested above, with smaller layouts, stretch out the plan. In the second link, if you look at the layouts under SAMPLES on the home page, you will see some N scale ones.
