Moved In, Have Train Room

I hit a new mile stone this past Thursday.  When my wife and I bought our new house I acquired my first ever space which is "mostly" designated for model railroading.  It's actually going to be a multi-purpose recreation area but the railroad should dominate a signification portion of it.  The basement is somewhere around 900-ish sq. ft.  I say "ish" because things like the utilities area, poles, pipes, and all kinds of things eat up usable space for house functionality.

For the moment the work table which I had setup previously in my apartment feels ridiculously small.  You can see a stack of Bachmann On30 boxes sitting there with a small assortment of items.  I've only brought down about 10-20% of the stuff.

The reality though is that we all start somewhere, and here's where it starts for me.

Looking North

Looking Northwest

Looking West (and slightly south)

Use of the Space
I mentioned the part about "multi-use".  One thing I've been considering is the concept of aisle space and what the rest of the room is like in addition to the layout.  There are a few factors that I want to be sure to include:

• There needs to be ample aisle room.
  I went to a HOn3 meetup a few weeks ago and there were 2ft. aisles.  After everyone crowded into the room most of us staid put and didn't move around because there just wasn't space.  There should be at least enough room for 2 people to stand side-by-side or for one person to pass while the other is standing and doing something.
  
• There needs to be a functional (ie. storage) aspect to the space.
  The basement can't just be trains.  It needs to serve as storage.  What this will almost certainly mean is that the layout will have shelves underneath of it (with perhaps a curtain to hide the stuff).
  
• There needs to be places to sit.
  On so many levels I've begun to realize this is critical.  The space can't be all layout.  Being able to sit down and relax is huge.  For one it means my wife (who can be quite a bookworm) can sit down in the basement with me reading a book while I work or operate the trains.  Including how she will interact with me while I interact with the layout will likely make the construction of the layout a much more acceptable idea.  Secondly, if I would like to host "railroad guests" it means people can hang out, chat, or relax without having to go upstairs and loiter in the "nice" living room.  Again, something I suspect will be critical to keeping my wife happy.  Third of course is it's just nice to have a comfortable place to sit.  I'm thinking something to the effect of a craigslist 2nd hand couch bought on-the-cheap.

So given all 3 of those design considerations the actual layout might end up being a simple around-the-wall style.  This has a good advantage in that there won't be any peninsulas that require a 180º turn around.  These seem to be common because they're necessary at some parts but from my planning and designing, they're hard to use from a station/spur perspective.  Their saving factor is they allow some interesting scenery possibilities but I think I'll try to avoid them where possible.