I probably won't. But if I did, here's how I would do it:This would represent a spare bedroom or basement, if we can free one up in the next five years (which is actually a reasonable thing to expect.) The dimensions here don't represent the entire room, necessarily, but a minimum area within the room that is 8x12 feet.
The green area is 4x8; a typical standard plywood size, and a very standard size for a "first layout" in model railroading. I'd probably do it as a western desert railroad, not unlike the Jerome & Southwestern (in fact, so "not unlike" that I'd use his track-plan, more or less. It's a really good one.)
When Olson expanded his J&S, he built the Back Alley & Wharf RR, which was a 2x6 extension coming out of the one side. However, why not take the opportunity to do even more, assuming you've got the space? Years ago, I considered leaving open an expansion that was a whole 'nother 4x8, but it seems that that would leave many parts of the railroad essentially unreachable to a person with normal sized arms. The 2' dimension was a smart one. But, if you took a 4x8 plywood and took a 2x3 bite out of the corner, you could get the best of both worlds; another (almost) 4x8, but with the accessibility you want. The orange sections would represent this expansion, which I wouldn't do until the green section was (more or less) done, perhaps—or maybe I just plan on it from the get-go too! This obviously would leave me room to do considerably more than the BA&W trackplan, so I'd have to freestyle my own material out there. This is OK, because I don't know that I want urban per se; I'm thinking more semi-urban at best is what I'd allow this railroad to grow to; it's a small railroad servicing a town that's (at best) the sized of Blackwater in the RDR games, plus an expanded suite of industries that are rural by nature; because the desert section would be especially focused on mining, the orange, which would be a primarily mountain section, would be focused on logging, and both would also do livestock, plus some other smaller industries while I'm at it.
This wouldn't be a truly very "prototypical" railroad, where model railroaders refer to the real world railroads as the "prototype"—it'd be a total fantasy that would meet my hobbyist needs regardless of how realistic or whatever it ends up being.
The gray area is not part of the layout, obviously. The green and orange "north" and "east" edges would be against the wall, or close enough to it, but I might want to add movable backdrops to put on the southern and western 4' edges too, at least for picture taking.
What else would this layout do? Well, while the green section, especially if I build it first, would make a continuous loop the orange section cannot make a second loop, although it can have one side of a loop on the bottom edge, and a bit long loop can be made with the entire green + orange section. A lot of serious model railroaders decry the loop, and prefer "switching layouts" with "realistic operation." I've—curiously—never been super interested in operation of model trains, but rather the building of them and the framing of them in diorama-like scenic vistas. This isn't to say that I may not take more interest in it at a later date, but I'd still want loops to just run trains around and watch them crawl through the scenery, as well as for operations—loops simulate travel time between stops, if nothing else, as well as create potential mainline bottlenecks if multiple trains are running at a time on the railroad. Which they should be, ideally.
Anyway, I don't intend to make this a major topic on this blog. I am revisiting my past interest in this potential hobby, and I've been piqued by the possibilities anew, but I still have constraints that limit my ability to get into it quite a bit, not least among them the fact that I have too many interests and potential hobbies. But we'll see. Maybe in a few years, something like this could be a reality.
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