Best way to start from scratch...

[gavin_t]

From chatting to the owner of the local model show he was happy to trade the rolling stock from the highlander set to something more suited to my design if I so wished.

I'd be ever so slightly cautious here. The green-liveried coaches in that set are rare. Perhaps the only ones in that livery? I'm sure they'll become very collectible in due course. Swapping them for generic BR blue coaches would be more useful, yes, but less of an investment. That doesn't matter to everyone, of course, but worth mentioning.

Not sure my modeling is up to that yet though! Small suburban setting may be easier for me.

Not sure this is true at all! Rural landscapes are very easy to do, in the sense that you can buy all the materials needed easily and cheaply. Woodland Scenics make tonnes of great stuff, and nothing is as much fun (to me) as building rocks and cliffs. Mastering them is a very smooth process, with a few simple steps to get right. Model trees come in all sorts, from generic bottlebrush types adequate for forests, through to whitemetal models perfect for centrepiece specimens. Again, Woodland Scenics make some good value packs of these, the plastic armature pine trees being ideal for Highlands setting.

Urban or suburban environments are much tougher to nail. For sure you can plonk down a few Metcalfe kits on a bit of grey-painted hardboard you're calling a road. But very few layouts approached in that way look anything other than forced caricatures of urban environments. Once you start looking at layouts such as Grahame Hedge's "Stoney Lane Depot" or Neil Cooper's "Horseblock Lane", you start seeing how much more effort is needed to 'nail it'. There's a lot more scratch building, and that needs to be a higher standard. Scratch building a farmyard shack or even a small cottage is much easier than doing a tower block or warehouse.

For your first layout, there's a lot to be said for going rural (whether Scottish or otherwise) simply because you'll run up something that looks nice, more quickly and with fewer compromises.

Cheers, NeMo

Defiantly more food for thought there then.
As my plan is a basic double loop from the peco set track handbook I was wondering if it would be too flat to be "scottish" haha. Will have to give it a good think I feel.

Thanks again