What to include in the coffee table layout?

Before you can start making a model railway layout, you have to know what you want to include as features.

My current stock is a mixture of GWR and WR stock – mainly Mk1 coaches and some Dapol Collett coaches with a variety of locos – Pannier with 1 B-Set, 14xx with Auto-coach, an old Farish Hall class, 2 Rail-cars GWR and WR, a Peco Collett Goods 0-6-0, a Farish Prairie, some coal wagons and lastly a Farish 0-6-0 BR saddle tank in Black.

I’d like to have a station on the layout but also some sidings to shunt. If there is space I’d like to have a bay terminus for the auto-train and rail-cars and a very small loco facility. Current thoughts would be for a back-scene acting as a scenic break to a 3 or 4 road fiddle yard, again space dependent. The classic tunnel or road bridge would be used to mask the scenic break.

The main problem is creating a ficticious scene but making it look believable. How would the station be reached by road traffic? How would industry be served by the sidings? Why is there a loco facility?

Space is obviously an issue with 4*2.5 even in N Gauge so there will have to be lots of planning before work can start. I’m used to planning in XTrkCad but there can be too much planning and not enough doing! I hope to post some track plan ideas here soon.