Introduction

When I was younger, I was given a small train set for Christmas. This small oval layout was soon transferred to the boarded loft at my parents house. Once a bit more space in the loft was cleared, I was able to re-design my layout to fit the 8ft by 4ft allocated to me. This new layout kept me busy for hours and kept me spending my pocket money. I then grew out of the trains and proceeded in to the world of computers. Since getting to the age of 26, I started to take an second interest in the model trains again 10 years on. I dug out my old train set again and put this together in my loft of my (then) new house.

I spent a year or so building a much larger and more complicated layout. However, over the next couple of years I experienced the following problems:-

	All my steel Track started rusting.
	I was constantly cleaning the track either to remove the rust, or dust/airborne dirt being blown in from under the eaves, or tiny bits of felt dropping from the roof.
	I had an excessive moisture problem (due to the well lagged roof - seems to be a problem with new houses.) which from time to time would cause the felt roof to 'sweat' and then drip onto the layout. I had a point motor that used to sit directly under one of the drips and it eventually seized up because of this!
	My roof space was not that high so standing up was a problem, plus crawling under the eaves to get to the far reaching places was not very comfortable.

All of the above caused me to re-think the layout's viability of being located in the loft.

I started looking for a new location for my layout...