The Mixed Bag Layout next>
The Building of “The Mixed Bag” Railway Railway Under construction, Railway under construction, Railway under constru…… History: 1. Spur of the moment purchase of a small Fleischmann N Scale Model Train Set for your own early Christmas present (purchase caused by going to the 21^st Annual Brisbane Miniature Train Show in 1998). The set is comprised of an 0-6-0 Tank Engine and 3 twin axle Passenger Cars with a small oval of track and a controller. 2. Set it all up on your lounge room coffee table and leave it there. 3. Now you spend the next month or three getting around to buying some timber and making up a suitable layout table. 4. Whilst building the table, decide that “It’s just not big enough !” 5. Go out and buy more timber for newer layout table, and finish the “old” layout table as a large fold-away table; meanwhile the “Train set” is still on the coffee table, getting sporadic use by the 4 yr old nephew when he visits. 6. As the new table is being slowly built, just go out and keep purchasing loco’s and wagons and buildings. 7. Repeat step 6 as many times as you want (or can get away with); meanwhile the coffee table now has many layers of magazines and papers over top of the “Train set”. 8. Eventually the table is built. Now spend the next few (read “many”) months designing the layout with the use of track sections and photocopies of track sections. 9. Now we are ready ! Lay the track and nail it down, wire it up and away we go. 10. Find out that the glue used on the cork tiles doesn’t seem to hold the tiles down too well and everything starts to lift and buckle. Now spend the next few months (read “many”) redesigning it all and you arrive at the present moment. Please don’t forget step 6.	Closeup of my first model train set in years.
	Within hours of purchase I had the train running around on my so called “temporary” layout table. Surely this table would have been big enough. I think the “Tim the Toolman” syndrome took over….More Power and more BIGGER…. My coffee table (and kitchen table) has a habit of becoming a “filing area”. Many things are just “temporarily” placed there. I found that photocopies of track sections allowed me an easy way of laying out various designs without actually having all the real track work.