No, not a real closet, but the apartment my wife and I share is not much bigger than one. I re-entered HO 3 years ago and have spent most of that time, when I'm in train mode, collecting locomotives and rolling stock kits and assembling them on my desk. I have modified the locomotives with better headlights and such and built and kadee'd over 70 Athearn kits. I read a lot of HO how-to's, back issues of MR and MRC, and plan future dioramas and modules.
When it comes time to run the locos, it's back and forth on the desk with a 4 foot test track. There is literally no room here for the most rudimentary of layouts. Now this might seem boring and extremely restrictive to all of you, but what I'm leading up to is, just like the prisoner who gets his satisfaction from painting or writing or sculpting in his cell, so I have derived great pleasure from the smallest of model train activities...things the average rail hobbyist takes for granted running his layout.
So here's the grand moment. I picked up an oval's worth of Bachmann steel rail EZ track for a couple of bucks at a thrift shop. They didn't work. Finally I dug them out again and cleaned them on a wire buffing wheel at my job. I had to make my own terminal track out of one of the straights. Put it together on the living room floor New Year's weekend and after 3 years finally got to run my locos up to speed one by one pulling a 4 car train. I watched them go round and round for hours like a little kid. I even dozed off to the clickety clack sound for awhile.
So my point is, experience is relative. To me, running my mostly-displayed engines on a 4 foot oval for a half hour was like having a 40 foot railroad empire at that moment. Thanks for listening.
Robby