ROZELLE STREET

Introduction

Two of the great temptations of gaining your own space to build a model railway is to fill that space with as much track as possible or to inadvertently design and build a layout that neither fits the time you have available to build and operate it, nor achieves what you want out of your modelling. The result: an unpainted timber concoction of track and wires that leads to more frustration and disappointment than joy, ultimately discouraging you from finishing that layout. Sound familiar?

At the end of 2015 I was preparing to move interstate for work and into a much smaller home. I read a blog post by North American model railway author Lance Mindheim encouraging modellers to build layouts to suit our lifestyles. The theory goes that if you only have time to run your layout for 30 minutes a day, by yourself, perhaps a double-garage-sized, round-the-walls behemoth requiring four operators isn’t going to be achievable in the time you have available.

My own spare-bedroom-sized New South Wales country branchline layout at the time was still just bare boards and unfinished trackwork after two years of periodic construction. Clearly, my current lifestyle was