Starting out

 Now, Starting this a bit later in process than had intended :-) Have spend a few weeks studying / bidding / buying all the stuff I'll need. 

Of course still waiting for most of it to arrive, ( bloody brexit, and customs :-( ) 

Mind you , as a side note , Amazon & ebay fulfilled items are doing the VAT , and in some cases deducting the UK VAT on orders from the UK.. which is good...and packages arriving in a timely manner..

However, was also using  Addresspal for items from UK, and they said they were going to handle VAT/Customs, but it's a bit of a nightmare at the moment! , ( have packages stuck at their depot for 2 weeks! ) , and as they're now making their way out, they're stuck at AnPost's Heathrow depot. Where customs inspect, and you then get a mail to pay the amount... Plus a €3.50 surcharge to An Post ! on top of the 6.5 addresspal charge, not impressed! , but I digress #rantover..

From research, settled on using SCARM to design a layout.. going through a few iterations , till I finally settled  

    

Version1

 

Version 2

Version 3

Which , with a couple of tweaks ended up at V5.2 ......

Final Plan

Colour coding indicates the different 'blocks' of track, they'll be isolated from each other, so that a train can be controlled separately on each 'block' ( so if I had 4 controllers, could run 4 different trains at same time , 1 per block :-) Although only have 2 controllers for now... 

note the brown area at top a small 'fiddle yard' , is also points where the layout can be expanded , (possibly in the future, I do have a couple of ideas :-)).

So baseboard bought... and sectioned, ready to lay down 'the plan'.... [need to glue/connect some strengthener's below the board first... the final size of 'the plan' is 900/1500mm ( or 5' x 3' in old money) . 

All caught up now.