So now I have measured room 20 times, and have drawn bench work. I am using 16 inch squares (John Armstrong) when planning layout. If I wanted a town, how big are city blocks in N scale? I'm trying to determine how big one of the 'tonsils' will be on my G shape. As someone mentioned earlier, I want to have a very simple trolly running through the streets of the small town. There will be a passenger station for the mainline.
In N gauge according to John Armstrong 16 inch squares allows conventional curves. Now for a city block, I am sure many variables apply. On my layout a city block is 24 inches by 9 inches. This allows a narrow lane between two parallel rows of buildings. I can imagine four large buildings taking up one downtown block. Just do a mock up of cardboard squares and see what fits your space .
Robin, when I looked at the track plan on your web site (nice job btw) I assume that each square is 12"?
Using John Armstrong's square calculation means your mininum mainline curve is around 14 1/2 inches give or take a little bit. Is this the case? The squares are usefull for track planning, but not so useful using structures. In fact, there is nothing in the book about this, and I haven't seen it referenced anywhere. I would get some cardboard from cereal boxes, detergent boxes, etc and mock up a couple of buildings in terms of size (the buildings don't have to look great as you are only after a "footprint"). Then toy with this shapes and sizes on a larger cardboard base as your layout, it may be only 4 feet long, but you will get a feel for how much track, spaced how wide apart, with structures.
