We knocked our house down and built a new bigger better one and out of that I got a bigger garage with a bigger workbench, a room for computers and models and, best of all, a designated layout room inside the house which has air con and heating. No more of that layout in the garage nonsense. We moved in a couple of months ago and the dust has started to settle on the sorting the house out. As my time has freed up from house stuff my focus has shifted back to hobbies so I have started building a new layout. The room is 3.5metres by 4.5 metres and will feature two layouts on opposing sides of the room

The plan is rough and ready at this point. Some parts are fixed and others I'm still figuring out how I am going to do. I have made half the base boards and will do the rest once I get some free time in December. This is one of the baseboards.

Most of the base boards will be this frame format. It'll help to keep the weight down. The majority of the layout will be train line running through scenery. On one side of the room I will make a scene based on Lower Largo with viaduct and harbour. On the other side I'll have a German city scene modelled on Rottenburg. This will have a station with about six platforms. The main line from this layout will go round the back scene of the lower Largo layout. Both lines will go around the room. The current problem is the Lower Largo line will have to go round the front of the German station when it is at the other side of the room so I am looking for ideas to disguise or hide it.

Anyway here are the two benches where the station and city scene will be.

Ignore all the crap underneath. It will be covered over at some future point. The track will be 130cm high all the way around. The lower benches are 110cm high and will feature a raised track. This will allow me to have slopes coming down from the track bed.

I'll also have to have some kind of a raising and lowering bridge for the track at the door to allow access.

We'll that's it for now. I'll post some more once something noteworthy happens.

cheers

Neil