The construction of my new N Scale layout will soon begin. The new home that my wife and myself started building in October last year is now complete, and I have been using the opportunity over the last few weeks to get a feel for my new train room and going over the track plan to decide what changes I need to make to the bench work of my previous layout to fit into the new space, ( considerably smaller than the space I had in our last house ).

One of my intentions from the time that the house plans were being drawn up was that the one bedroom would become my layout room. The room measures 6 meters by 4 meters (19ft x 13ft) along two of the walls that the layout will be built up against.

My layout will be freelanced, based loosely on the Burlington Northern operations in the Seattle area and set in the mid 1990's, before the merger that created the BNSF. This will result in the BN Green appearing predominantly on the layout with an occasional Amtrak, Montana Rail Link and Union Pacific train making an appearance.

I have a number of design requirements that will feature on the layout.

1. The layout will be a linear design using four levels with the trains passing through each scene once.

2. There will be a mix of double and single mainline track to add interest to operations.

3. The layout will include one yard and a number of industries to keep up to four operators busy during an operating system, but have a long enough main line run so I can just sit back and watch trains run when I feel like it.

4. I will have hidden staging for up to 12 trains.

As I finalize the track plans and progress with the layout, I will post more details for all to share.

I have included two photographs of the room I will be using.

The layout will be L shaped and built along the long wall and in front of the window against the other wall.

Kevin