05-14-2011, 10:03 AM
I would encourage you to have patience. Aren't you still living at home with your parents while going to school full time? Once you have finished your formal education, started on a career path, and ready to find your own home, then you can look for a home with a train room large enough to fit what you want to have. I think your basic problem right now is that you have a 4x8 space and you can't fit a 20x20 lay out into it no matter how much you try.
I have a close friend here in So Cal that I think you could take a lesson from. He is probably about 5-7 years from retiring. He lives in a small typical tract home here in So Cal and works as an electrical engineer in the aerospace industry. He has bought a 5 acre property in Newport, Oregon to retire to. It has a house and a barn on the property. Right now, he rents out the house to a family, and he has a small apartment in the barn that he and his wife stay in when the go up there for 2 weeks every summer. They have been moving stuff up every summer and storing the stuff in the barn to minimize the amount of stuff they need to move when retirement day comes. When he moves up there, he will have a huge layout space in the barn to build his dream layout. Right now, he has a 4x8 in his covered patio. He is building models to use on the ultimate layout, and has enough locomotives that he could not possibly fit them all on all of the track on the 4x8. His plan is to model Philadelphia where he grew up, and he models Conrail & CSX with models in paint for Pennsy, Reading, C&O, B&O, CSX, Conrail Blue, and probably a few others that I have forgotten. I think his eventual plan is to include some Septa under catenary as well.
I have a close friend here in So Cal that I think you could take a lesson from. He is probably about 5-7 years from retiring. He lives in a small typical tract home here in So Cal and works as an electrical engineer in the aerospace industry. He has bought a 5 acre property in Newport, Oregon to retire to. It has a house and a barn on the property. Right now, he rents out the house to a family, and he has a small apartment in the barn that he and his wife stay in when the go up there for 2 weeks every summer. They have been moving stuff up every summer and storing the stuff in the barn to minimize the amount of stuff they need to move when retirement day comes. When he moves up there, he will have a huge layout space in the barn to build his dream layout. Right now, he has a 4x8 in his covered patio. He is building models to use on the ultimate layout, and has enough locomotives that he could not possibly fit them all on all of the track on the 4x8. His plan is to model Philadelphia where he grew up, and he models Conrail & CSX with models in paint for Pennsy, Reading, C&O, B&O, CSX, Conrail Blue, and probably a few others that I have forgotten. I think his eventual plan is to include some Septa under catenary as well.