Hi TL - if I may take the liberty to call you by that?
Glad you decided to join us and get involved. All that have welcomed you are long time experienced modelers so any of us should be able to offer a solution or even several options to consider.
I'll take the liberty and mention a few things you'll need to consider, one of which your already faced with, space and scale.
Depending on your age, agility & eyesite, especially if you like constructing building kits or assembling models and doing detailing a larger scale such as HO is a lot easier to work with compared to 'N' scale but 'N' does allow you to fit about twice as much into the same space.
I've been in HO ever since I was very young and stayed with that scale as it seems to offer the best of both worlds, fairly small yet big enough to see most detail but I still need glasses and tweezers at times like most of us.
The main consideration you need make is is what area you can afford to build a layout in? It's a proven fact that if you have a room that is say 10'x12' or even smaller, an around the wall layout is the way to go as it offers much easier access to most all areas and you can view your trains against a background and walk around the center as you operate and also get more operation into your layout easier as well as a more irregular track plan rather than a plain oval that gets real tiring real soon.
As has been mentioned and I noticed your Diesel Avatar, you'll need to consider what radius curves particular loco's require as that will dictate the minimum radius's you'll need on your layout. Of course if your going to just have a straight switching layout curves won't be involved unless you want an 'L' shaped layout.
Being that your space is somewhat limited you will probably need to go with loco's that will handle an 18" radius curves or possible even smaller diesels that will handle even smaller radius's and they can still be very enjoyable.
Let us know the space you have as there are several individuals that are a wiz at using a computer aided track planning program such as SCRAM available as a free download on the forum here or others. I imagine some of these individuals would
be glad to try and come up with an imaginative track plan for you or maybe your also good at doing this?
I hope I've offered something to consider but again if you have questions don't hesitate to ask
Oh, also stop in at the ANPL coffee shop/ 'Running Bears' Coffee shop' named after a fallen friend of the group. You can talk about what things your trying to solve or just about anything else.
Welcome aboard,
David
