I have part of a room that I am dedicating to my new layout. The area is 12'9" wide x 11' long. I will mostly be running 40' & 50' cars, but with some long locos such as an AC6000 and a Santa Fe 2-10-2 and once in awhile wells style cars behind the AC, all in HO. I am not looking for anything prototypically accurate. I just want to use this as a learning layout with some simple elevations, a little bit of scenery, mostly hills, trees with a few random buildings maybe try some water. More of a countryside look.

Okay, I reached a point where I need to be pretty sure of my yard design so I can finish a short wall that is on one end of the yard. I am thinking one day we will expand thru that wall into portable staging yards. So I will cut the opening now. In trying to maintain a reasonable reach I am planning my yard 15 tracks deep. The back 6 are planned to be staging tracks. The first 9 are arriving, departing and sorting/storage tracks.

There will be an access area behind the staging tracks so we wouldn't have to reach across the entire yard if we needed access.

I have brought this up before, and as a long time lurker have been watching to see if anyone else has thought of it. I have been enjoying the RichlawnII thread, as it is based on the same design I am attracted to, the Heart of Georgia.

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Well, this is rather more nerve-wracking than I thought it would be; posting the very early sketches of a chainsaw layout I'm considering at the moment.

What you see below represents the culmination of several weeks of sketching ideas and changing many things around and I feel quite close to what I'm aiming for now. My inspiration and reasoning for this layout is as follows: