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I am building a two level layout and am kind of changing themes on the second deck. The first deck is central vally CA and the second level is the Sierras. First level has a town and HWY99 scene as well as a yard, upper level has scenes cherry picked from the Sierra, YV and Hetch Hetchy RRs. Bottom level has big steam (cab forwards and the like ) hauling reefers and class 1 rolling stock. Top level has older "junk", shays. small 2-6-0s, beat up cars, log bunks, and other older rolling stock still running on arch bar trucks climbing steep grades through the mountains. Operations include through trains on the bottom (to and from staging) and trains being made up in the yard on the lower level to go up to the hills. The levels are connected by a helix. Seems to me that in your space, the question is how are you going to get from level to level? A helix takes up roughly a 5.5' X 5.5' square (you can cheat this, but not a whole bunch). This will take up quite a chunk in your space. Other ideas such as the around the room (nolix) will require pretty steep grades to get suffiiceint elevation to get to another deck. 2% is the maximum most modelers use in grades . This translates to a 2" rise per 100" of travel or roughly 1 inch per 4 feet of track. You can see the problem when you consider that it will take almost 50 ft of track to climb one foot.. That is one lap around your room at a constant 2%. Many double deck designs have more than one foot separating decks (mine are 20" apart). If it were me, I would grab the space quickly before other ideas are hatched. Move some train stuff in there and give the appearance of utilizing the space while you hatch a plan. The John Armstrong book on track planning is a good place to start. Sketch out a scale drawing of your room, buy one of those track planning templates and start drawing plans. Perhaps visit some double deck layouts in the area and steal ideas, I did. My two cents, Guy
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