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4' x 12' layout
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In N-scale, 4' of layout depth is rather a lot, it is certainly enough to be divided with a backdrop of some sort in order to create multiple "places". I did just this with a 4x8 foot layout I built back in my younger years, where on one side of the backdrop was the city of Winchester, VA, while just a quarter of an inch away was the very remote city of Portsmouth, VA. <br /> <br />With 12' of length, too, you can do an excellent job of representing a realistic station stop or passing siding. I'm currently planning my layout around my 9' long staging tracks, which will be able to hold approximately 3 deisels plus about 24 cars, including caboose. If you're ambitious and want to run similarly long trains, you'll need passing sidings long enough to hold them, which can be done in 12' even if you only have passing siding along the tangent tracks between the loops at the ends. <br /> <br />Staging is something I highly recommend, but with your space restraints it may be difficult to add in staging where it will be hidden. I suggest just dedicating the first 4 to 6 inches of your 48" of depth to staging, and place two or three accessible tracks in this foreground. The rest of the track, which will be part of the scene, could be elevated in order to minimize the impact of the staging, with a partial helix (spiraling ramp) leading to the staging. I would say that two tracks are better than three in this case, because rather than provide "parking spaces" for full trains, instead what you're creating is a front-and-center fiddle yard, where you physically add and remove trains to the layout, and which is ordinarily empty. One track could be a through route, with helixes at each end. Think of it like a stage for a play, and you're looking at it from the actor's point of view: you place trains onto the ready track, then when they get their cue, they spiral up onto the scenicked portion of the layout, perform their soliloquy and break a leg, then come spiraling back down to be taken "offstage". Of course, you could have staging tracks on both sides... <br /> <br />With a divider down the middle, and staging on both long sides, you might even choose to represent two entirely different railroads, which have an interchange somewhere. There are so many possibilities...
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