Hi Folks,

I'm not shy to say I've been lurking on this site for a while, looking at the photos, and getting a lot of inspiration from everyone here...

I recently tore down an n-scale 6'x10' bedroom layout as it was taking up too much of my time, money, and (living in a 800sq ft condominium) space. I'm now in the process of building a much smaller (modular) wide-shelf layout.

The new layout planned is 120" x 28" or 10' x 2'4", this will be divided into two 5 foot sections. Eventually I plan to have the two sections atop a rolling base so they can be moved easily if necessary.

The theme of the layout planned is urban germany (most likely Berlin). I'm modeling in the era of the early 90s - 2000s, as there is a lot of options for trains, with a focus on high speed passenger service and light rail service.

Here is a photo of the plan.

I plan to use kato sectional track, although, i'm not a fan of the sectional track, I absolutely HATE ballasting. This will reduce the amount I'll have to do. I only plan to ballast the edges of the plastic ballast and hope to weather them well to blend the two together.

To fit a wide shelf with a 4 track mainline, I had to use non-prototypical curves. I plan to hide these behind a scenery divide where I'll also hide a small fiddle yard. The two inner tracks are for the light rail. I've already got one of the kato-lemke regio express trains, they seem to work well on the tight radii curves. Atleast on paper. I've have those tightest sections on back order.

The track plan will be raised up on a viaduct about 1-3/4" from the base. and include a small commuter station in the right side.

I've made a small card model of how the finished product might look.