I started with an adaptation of my original layout designed for Kato Unitrack (I ended up re-designing the upper level a little bit).
I knew that I wanted to be able to move the layout out of the way since the room that it's in is not that big, so I bought a pair of folding table legs and laid them out on the door as pictured.
I quickly realized that the door, which is only two thin sheets of (MDF?), would not support the screws for the legs, so I bought and had cut some plywood and used them as a base for the legs. The plywood was attached in place with wood glue and the screws were just long enough to go right through and bite into the surface of the door. It turned out to be strong, light, and portable which was perfect.
Once I had the table ready I laid out my track. The base level was easy and quick to set up - I just had to drill out the holes in each piece of track, drill holes for the power and switch wires to pass through, then nail the track into the surface of the table. The material of the hollow core door is perfect for grabbing the nails with enough force to keep the track in place.
I started with the yard area and laid out the track mostly by eye, trying making sure that all the connections were as square as possible, although Unitrack has quite a bit of flexibility in its connections which is nice. I also tested each connection as I went, and also ran a locomotive around to make sure there were no problematic connections. The following image is quite blurry but you can see the finished ramp up to the upper level, which I built from thin MDF and supported by balsa cylinders cut to size.
Next step is to build the MDF base for the upper level and build a custom piece of track for the wooden bridge.
