... you're just standing there admiring your work.
You've spent a year drawing plans, trying out track plans, constructing the baseboards, jigging points around until you're happy with what you've got. Then you start to lay track in earnest, wire up the point work, sort out the isolating sections (please no dcc comments!), start to scenic the whole thing. You take a year or two doing this - after all you do have a life out side of your model railway. Then you move on to the next phase and incorporate a NG add-on and construct the exchange sidings and all is well with the world.
Then as you're stood there admiring all your hard work it suddenly dawns on you that the only reason you have a seven road roundhouse is that just before laying out your plans you'd bought a turn-table and didn't want to waste the money. And you think to yourself, "Why have I got an engine shed that can comfortably hold 20+ engines, coaling facilities that would make Steamtown go green with envy stuck next to a medium sized station on a secondary line, that by the way has almost near non existent good facilities?".
So you bite the bullet and lift the tracks to and inside the round house, the coaling stage goes under the hammer, the custom made control panel is ripped out and yes, you can see it all reforming in your minds eye. "What if I take that road that went from the maintenance shed to the staging area and re-route it so that it goes into the third platform road - that way I'll have a branch line". Great! So you do it and it looks good. So you think to yourself, "Well, while I'm at it I might as well re-lay the approach to the private exchange sidings, end loading dock and cattle pens. After all there is a bit of kink there". So you do that as well, and again it looks great. It really is coming together again but then you think, "Now if I'm going to put all those sidings where the roundhouse was, wouldn't it be a good idea if I had a goods loop?".
So out comes everything else, and two hours later you look back on your work and see a twin oval with a spur running to a branchline and precious little else. Excepting of course so much piled up track even Beeching would have baulked at, a forest of wires poking up through the baseboards, stacked points and ballast everywhere.
Oh ... and no working railway.
Just thought I'd share my experiences of the last couple of days with the group.