Yank....I was wondering why a basement? Are there other options or is the area you must live in a basement only proposition?
In our part of the country, there are a few basements but most are of the "walk-out" type. What we did was to add a second story to our 4 car garage. The second story above the garage has a 10.5 foot ceiling to accommodate the highrises I knew I was going to build for the layout. The area is approximately 30 by 40 with no obstructions anywhere. This is because we installed 18" engineered beams every 16" in the floor which divides the garage ceiling and the train room floor. There are 16" engineered beams in the train room ceiling / roof every 16". This allowed us to have a garage with no exposed beams and no poles in the way. Same for the train room above.
Alan
Basements are usually cheaper for the square footage and they are much cheaper to heat/cool than an upper floor or attic.
