I would to hear from you that have been involved with the construction of lift-gate modules for shows. We display at the Champlain Valley Fair, Essex Jct. VT for 10 days the week before Labor Day. This a combined effort of the Northwestern Vermont Model RR and the Green MT div of the NMRA. Would like to hear about your experience and a possible and photo of your lift-gate or ones you have seen. The loop is the NWV and the stub on the end is Bellows Falls, VT  module of the Greenmountain Division of the NMRA. My goal is to build a lift-gate for this year.

I have been experimenting with some Micro LEDs for a structure that I am been building.

I purchased 10x Warm White Pico 0402 prewired LEDs from Model Railroad Software/Evans Design :-

https://www.modeltrainsoftware.com/collections/hobby-leds/products/chip-nano-pico-leds

And a sprue of Lamp Shades from Shapeways - Incredible Miniatures Scale Models :-

Doing the article for MRH put some more motivation in me to get some work done on the layout. I've been spending a lot of time lately on getting cars and locomotives built, detailed and weathered. I'll be at the N Scale Convention in Salt Lake City in a few weeks displaying models and entering them in the contest. When I need a break from that, I've been working on backdrops and getting the Blythe Branch operational.

There's an active thread lamenting the tendency of beginners to over stuff layouts. There are also discussions about the evils of helices, double deck layouts, tight aisles and a plethora of other sins.

Most of this is theoretical though, criticisms of proposed layouts. I am interested in hard facts-- what planing decision did you make, build and regret later? It's OK to confess to common  pitfalls, as duplicate disasters show how prevalent a problem is.

So is the Tymesaver really all that hard to work on?