I have a question to pose. I'm starting up my N scale empire, and, since I've never built a layout before, is it better to start with your mainline and build off of it, or should I start with a yard and/or industrial area?
It doesn't really matter as long you have a plan in place. However, most people do the mainline first. The key is to have a plan in place so you don't end up in a situation where you run out of space!
McC - I'm not sure what you mean. The layout you posted in the N Scale forum looks good. If you mean the actual construction then I agree with MK. Most folks if on a limited budget will build at least a loop of track to get the trains running. After that the yard and spurs as budge and time allow. //Note: I ignored that and built my point to point first which I regretted and finaly added / finished a loop which had not been in the orriginal plan. I feel you need more spurs / industries. Do you have a plan you can share?
I laid out my main and went from there. As my layout has progressed I am altering things. Operating my mainline has really changed my perspective on how things will work. I ended up taking a great deal of advice from people on here. Going back and rereading my layout design thread I realized that much of my redesign was predicted by other members who were commenting on my design. I just had to see it in real life to see what they meant. You will probably end up finding that much of what you thought would be huge areas of layout, will end up being much smaller. I think it comes from seeing layout pictures in magazines, along with track plans. Things just seem bigger in the planning stage. In my case it was my yard tracks that seemed like they would be huge. Instead they are turning out to be rather small, only 2.5 feet long, and I am going to wrap them around the curves to make them longer. With the curves it may end up being more like 4 to 5 feet long. The most important thing is to get trains running.
