Thanks, Steve. My 35 by 3 to 4 foot layout has been a project I have worked on, off and on, since the mid 1990s, so it's over 20 years old, though I built most of it very intensely in about 6 months. It goes around 3 walls in each of the 2 rooms in my basement: the playroom and the laundry/furnace room.
If you keep at it, little by little, you can accomplish more than you can imagine, over time. Some of our Forum friends have spectacular layouts because of this.
I think my long and narrow switching layout with 8 sidings is a pretty good design for a modest-sized layout. I only half a half basement, not a full basement under the entire house, which I wish I had.
It's such a luxury for a model railroader to have a great big space for the layout. Arnold
