I am a newbie to model railroading. My wife bought me an HO scale set a long time ago, but due to space problems I would set it up and then put it away. As you can imagine setting it up and tearing it down became a hassle. Then I found the set again while cleaning out some closets and I am bitten by the bug to have a real layout. I have an area for a 4x8 layout and I have been reading everything I could find on the subject. I know that I am not interested in the history as much as I like the looks of the trains (steam, deisel, freight and passenger) so I am not trying to copy any existing rail lines. I thought I would like to have enough space for a town and streets, maybe making in the style of the 50's small town(I like the building styles). I thought that I would post my layout to this site to see if I could get any suggestions. If my picture post properly you can see what I have so far. I would like to have a small hill to the left so that I could have a tunnel for the tracks and the spur on the left I thought about having a grain silo. The spur at the top I had planned to have a warehouse. At the bottom I had thought about putting a rural rail station. The curves are at 18"R, so I know that I can't run the real long cars of some passenger trains, but I had hoped to find some smaller ones (suggestions please). Reading about DCC, I had hoped that this plan would leave option to upgrade. If anyone is interested I used the Atlas RTS software at their site. It took some time to get used to, but for free you can't beat the price.