Can you tell what it is yet?

So I'm nearly 50, it's about time I started playing with toys again!

    Some years ago I had an N gauge layout that I lovingly created and spent all my spare cash on so I was gutted when scumbag burglars decided to smash it up and stamp on my locos and wagons. This disheartened me and I gave up playing with trains but promised myself I would start another layout once I reached 50....that's only 3 months away.

From this....

 I don't have a huge amount of space(or money for that matter!) but I decided to get the largest baseboard I could squeeze into the spare room and ended up with  a 5ft 5" X 3ft MDF topped beastie which is probably a touch too big but I'll work round it.

To this....

Despite my natural ineptitude at all things DIY related(I'm a firm believer in the principle that if a job's worth doing....it's worth getting someone who knows what they're doing to do it!) I managed to build the framework and fix the MDF to it with nails and glue.

To this.

  I recently purchased an entire layouts worth of track, locos, wagons, buildings, coaches, scenery and just about anything else needed to build a layout so I got all the Peco Setrack out and started working out what track configurations I could fit onto my baseboard. After several hours(and several rest periods!!) I could take no more, I have a painful spine condition so bending over the board and trying various track variations really took its toll. I needed an option which would make things easier for me so I scoured the net and discovered Kato Unitrack.....the answer to my problem?...well hopefully but certainly not a cheap answer.

Out with the old

  As mentioned above I have a large amount of n gauge items so I went through the boxes to see what I wouldn't be using on my layout, I listed the first batch on eBay and made enough money to buy some Unitrack, an assortment of Kestrel kits and some other 'necessary' items such as DC extension leads, scenic cement, a Lydle End bungalow(which looks remarkably like the bungalow I live in!) a Gaugemaster scenic background and some Kato ballast which I must say really does match the colouring of the track base perfectly.

  Armed with my assorted easy to use Kato track I set about the track configuration options experimentation again and despite plenty of help from the good people at the N Gauge Forum( http://www.ngaugeforum.co.uk/ ) I decided on a slighty unconventional big loop with a 'cut through' track and a line end station stop(see photo below)

 

 

 Next job is to start making it look less like an empty board and more like a model railway, I have quite a few small sheets of polystyrene so I measured them up....

 

 

....and cut them to fit with a hot knife....the secret is don't let the knife get too hot or it will just melt the polystyrene but don't let it get too cold either or the polystyrene will break....practice makes perfect.

 Polystyrene is great for 'building' on and easy to stick things to or into such as fences, this is the area I will be placing a 'town' with a mixture of terraced houses, semi detached houses, bungalows and some shops..... I just have to wait for the Kestrel kits to arrive!!.