While I certainly admire the layout, detailing, etc., I wouldn't want to emulate it even if I had the talent, patience, craftsmanship and compulsion to do it, which I don't. I would imagine that in order for me to accomplish something like this, it would have take over my life, which I wouldn't want it to do. Apparently, from Mr. Miller's description above, Norm has a life so he's able to create a partition, for lack of a better word, that separates the real world from the model world that he's created.
I also recall, from a thread several years ago when this layout was being built, that the layout plan itself is relatively "simple" in that it's somewhat flat, with a couple of loops, a large number of crossover switches and a spur leading to a yard/roundhouse area proving that you don't need a complex design in order to create an outstanding layout. This is something I probably should have taken more to heart when building my layout, which looks like a design a drunk pretzel maker would have come up with.
