If you are going to buy a new basement, you get to choose what and how big. It should be a REQUIREMENT, that a suitable train space be provided.
When we were shopping for this house many years ago, my wife had my requirements well memorized. I was working kinda long, and she was checking things out and picking likely candidates. One requirement was full basement and she had that writeen in stone. Also no tri or bi levels since they only half basements if any. This area has a lot of houses with half basements. We stopped working with our first realtor because she kept taking her to tri-levels and houses with half basements. She would pull up and tell my wife, "just look at it, you will like it". My wife finally refused to get out of the car unless it looked like what we wanted from the outside. She told the realtor, you are wasting both our times with a lot of these. we found a new realtor, that got it right off and found just what we wanted in a few weeks.
One of the model RRs in this area has a wife who is a realtor, and she understands "model Railroad houses". You need to find a good realter.
