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I might have to do some hunting, but back in 1993, as a co-op student living in an apartment, I had similar size restrictions and spent many months designing and redesigning small layouts to fit. I had a very specific intention: West Virginia coal hauling mainline, and I wanted to feature a vignette of a realistically-sized mine, and whatever bridges I could squeeze in. Yard space and industrial trackwork puzzles were not on the radar. All my designs were done on graph paper, and the one I ended up going with was 3.5 feet by 5.5 feet, and in that I incorporated a long folded loop of mainline that began from hidden staging (long enough to hold an entire mine turn), passed by a junction station similar to Point-of-Rocks Maryland, climbed over itself to get to a large three-track mine (about 15 cars capacity), then moved beyond that to a return loop, so that it could go back the way it came into staging again. In addition, the switches at the junction could be set so that instead on one long loop it acted as two independent loops, good for show running (I did display this layout at a few train shows). And I still had room for a medium-sized grain elevator spur plus an off-the-edge interchange track, which hinted at future expansion potential. And, what was really key for me, it all happened in a scenically plausible setting, with a small creek winding through the scene, necessitating a whole menagerie of bridges and culverts. The chief visual feature was a long multiple-span steel bridge which sliced diagonally across the middle. <br /> <br />Of course, to get all of this in, I did have to resort to tighter radius curves than I tolerate on my "big" layout. I tried to keep it to 11" minimum, but I think I bent some flextrack tighter than this in places. The same plan won't work with your smaller space, but I know there's a lot that can be done with that much N-scale real estate. Do you have a focus, a particular railroad or vignette you'd like to see? If not, as a first step I'd say that refining your focus is the first step.
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