Ideas for a future college layout

[FCIN]

I was also thinking of doing a version of alcanman's Palmetto Spur layout, It would be alot more prototypical than a Timesaver.

Yes, it would certainly be more prototypical than a Timewaster plan. Only need three turnouts and a few feet of flex track and the plan can fit on a 1x6. I'd go a little deeper, like 16 inches if possible. Add a narrow 4ft removable staging/switching lead and you could have simple, yet prototypical layout like this:     Industries A, B and the Team Track would each hold 2 50ft/60ft cars and the 4 foot switching lead would hold a typical 4 axle HO engine and four or five 50ft/60ft cars. Plenty of opportunities for scratch building the structures and doing some scenery too. And of course you could spend a lot of time weathering and detailing your equipment. Wouldn't need a large fleet of cars either.

One other thing. Using Peco insulated turnouts (medium radius or roughly No. 6), you'd only need one set of feeders just to the right of the first switch to operate this initially. Of course I'd put power feeders to each turnout and section of track as time permitted. I'm currently operating a 20 foot main track with 4 turnouts and only have one set of feeders and it operates great.

Just something to consider on down the road. College may well take up a lot more time then you think, so your modeling time may be far less then you think. Keep it simple, yet interesting.