Hi there,

I wanted to say hello and introduce myself as I plan to become active on these pages as I go through my adventure, and share it with you guys. I've been a lurker for a little while, having just finished reading every back issue of MRH (largely while I should have been working! for shame!) and also become active searching the forum for answers to questions I have.

I am in the early stages of planning a first-layout-for-years (more than I care to think about) as I am in the lucky position to be semi-retired and have a huge space (eventually) to fill with my models. I don't only do railways, but also airfix style airplanes and I have designs to combine the two interests (as will become apparent).

Anyway, I'm based in Bulgaria and I'm pretty sure I'm the only one here, I did see on the map that there is someone in Romania which is relatively close, and I'm obviously coming up against a language barrier in getting tools and materials for my construction. I've bought an Old School in a tiny village in the mountains to the south, near Greece, which has given me the space to finally begin dreaming of a layout. My plan is for a freelanced layout combining scenes from very many disparate parts of the world, not all of them actually revolving around a railway in real life, all of which have some meaning to me personally. This is how I plan to keep my interest as I've very little knowledge of actual trains; of course I have much more than I did having read so much about operations and this has already changed my plans.

My first layout is going to be a day-tripping tourist steam railway and it will be a "chainsaw" layout as a practice with the aim of salvaging some of it but probably just binning it all when I finally get into the roof space; that needs a lot of work to make it suitable for trains.

I'll be posting again in various of the threads on here I'm sure as I continue my path and I look forward to sharing the track plan I am nearly happy with as a version one for your criticism and encouragement.

Cheers

roo