Yeah, it is a hobby I'm getting back into thanks to  flinters after having not fiddled around with it in a little over 20 years.

For those curious, I'm into N scale since that's what I spent part of my childhood, and teenage years playing with. Most of my setups were something I could cobble together in a short time, and tear apart later that day. Never had the space to set up an actual layout. Hopefully that will change in the coming months.

I have some space to play with, but not a lot for a small switching layout. An area of about 54" wide by 18" deep (at most). And of course with Flinters being Flinters, he pointed out I can probably do another shelf above it for maybe a small interchange yard. It can be the same width, but not as deep. And he's figured out a way to build a vertical staging elevator that would allow me to move a consist from one lever to another without using a helix.

And hopefully in the future, when I have my own house, I can go for a bigger layout, but that is years down the road.

As to what railroad, and era, I'm going for Southern Pacific during the late 1970s; 1977 to 1980. Maybe 1976 to 1981 to give me a little more leeway on motive power. Though I'll have some Western Pacific mixed in too. The reasoning behind that is that I spent a number of years living in the Sacramento, CA area, which was a big rail town. During the era I'm going for, they had Southern Pacific, Western Pacific, Sacramento Northern, and Central California Traction Company operating in the area.

At this stage, I'm building up rolling stock, and turnouts. Need to get some rail joiners, terminal rail joiners, a DCC decoder controller thing, and other items. Will try to post photos of any progress. Woo.