Yesterday morning I could hear my mentor, Johnny Mann, saying "Young Eric, if the design is becoming too complex then (a) it's probably wrong (b) it will almost certainly cost too much. Think again!" So that's what I'm doing.

I've gone right back to my original broad spec but armed with what I have learned along the way. I don't like fiddle yards, at least not for a home layout. I fully appreciate their use for exhibition layouts where you have a terminus station and the fiddle yard represents the rest of the railway system but when you have limited space, as I do, then to me, they take up too much real estate. So I want all my layout to be modelled and the stations to provide the storage space for stock which is not moving and also the justification for running the trains.

The layout will be DCC, again something I had not intended but once I started reading up on it I became convinced that it was the way forward. (Roxy & Izzie: there is an explanation below). It means that I can revert to my original desire of a continuous loop so that having built and dispatched a train it will trundle round and round while I build another. In due course it can arrive at one of the stations and be handled.

I know that the space I have available is considerably wider than first thought and longer than I originally allocated. You can see in the photo that the layout is 4.2m long and 750mm wide with a further 150mm right under the eaves which adds to the turning circle and provides a straight which can be a cutting and will give access if something comes off the track under the hill.

I was having great difficulty getting an interesting design so I reverted to standard interviewing techniques and to cut a long story short, Fishguard & Goodwick got the job. However the track diagram will be altered slightly and there's no way that the finished station will be said to be a representation of F&G. I just want a diagram that looks believable, which this will.

I have two shortlists for the other positions but I want to resolve Rosedale Junction first.

My next job is to modify the diagram of F&G to suit my purposes.

DCC

In a conventional layout it is necessary to know all the places where you will want to park a locomotive so that you can create isolated sections with switches in a control panel. If you don't do this all the locos will move when you turn up the regulator. Not very desirable!! But, simply put, DCC (Digital Command Control) sends an instruction to loco number one to, for instance,  move forward slowly and all other locos simply ignore the instruction. Thus you avoid a massive wiring exercise and you can park locos wherever you wish, just like on a real railway. Imagine my dad, organising Top Shed, and having to tell his crew "you can't park that loco there, we forgot to put in an isolator"