I’m thinking about taking a couple of hours and tidying it up
Rick
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That may take a couple of days. 
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Where’s Waldo?
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Amateur! LOL
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Looks like you and I have the same attitude about organization.
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Rick, I have no words to express what I see here! 
Regards, Chris
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I don’t see enough cabinets into which all your items can be shoved. As long as you know where a particular item is, you are good. I follow this system as well. “Organized piles” is what I call it. Another advantage of the cluttered look is that it deters spouses who do not share your hobbies, and this automatically creates a haven from constant reminders about undone chores. A comfy old recliner, a small TV, and a beverage cooler, located behind the biggest pile, will complete the great setup you have going.
Works for me.
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Rick, is there a layout buried somewhere under all that? 
Regards, Chris
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I believe that is the dispatcher’s office, Chris. 
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Ha Ha Ha Believe it or not Tophias, there is indeed. But ya gotta turn left at the top of the stairs instead of making a terrible mistake and turning to the right and entering that workshop.
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You deserve some sort of prize for that mess! 
But mine might be a close second.
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Photos?
See two posts above, Rich Photos should be there, hopefully. I’m bad a this online stuff, takes me a while. 
I really like Arjun’s description of “Organized Piles.” Upon reading it I thought to myself, “Exactly!!” 
Rick
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I suppose I don’t feel quite so bad about my own workbench now, but mine is often fairly cluttered–right now it’s worse than this because I’m flipping my entire layout 180 degrees (principally to turn a duck-under into a lift-out bridge), so all the rolling stock are sitting in boxes on the workbench! But this is how it typically looks, pre-flip.
The other half of the layout room–no workbench, but storage and woodworking tools beneath the layout; having layout and workbench in the same room means I have to maintain a certain level of tidiness just to keep things accessible and operating. When I do an “open house” I move the power tools outdoors and do a token amount of workbench organizing, clutter looks neater when it’s stacked at right angles.
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Jetrock, I’m pretty sure I understand what you are doing. Is that also a peninsula that you have in the top photo? It seems to be missing in the bottom photo and I’m sure it’s just the way I am looking at it. It’s an impressive amount of work that you’ve done and swinging it 180 degrees will be no mean feat. Hope it works out great. Btw, what’s the general idea behind your layout? Thanks Rick
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I think mine is more messy
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Prove it. Show us your mess. 
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Gotta love a train around a tree. Mirrors my first experience. Rick
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The layout room is a 15.25’x23’ garage, with a 4.5’x4’ bathroom next to the garage door curtain (on the right in the lower photo.) The layout was U-shaped in its previous incarnation, in an 11x25 foot basement room, and was adapted to the garage by narrowing and shortening 2 of the sections by ~2 feet. So what you see on the left in the top photo is not a peninsula but the main layout. This is the layout’s second move, it’s all built of sections (no more than 3’x6’, mostly 1’ wide) that sit on open frame shelving, held together by C-clamps, Wago connectors, and gravity.
(Panoramic pic of the old layout room, with messy workshop):
In the form shown in this photo, it’s an around-the-room oval (although the part in front of the garage door is just pink foam held up by an IKEA IVAR piece and a pair of 2x2s), with what will either be a branch line or staging track (haven’t decided yet) to the far left in the first photo–kind of a lower-case “e” track plan, with the tail of the “e” as the branch/staging. The flip will let me turn a duckunder that’s becoming a literal pain in the neck into a lift-out bridge (I miscalculated how often I’d be opening the garage door when moving the layout, and planned on having the bridge there, instead of next to the side door of the garage where I actually enter the building 99% of the time.)
The portion in the lower photo (in front of the garage door curtain) has already been dismantled so I could re-paint and install wall shelving. The other 5 sections will require a bit more work (taking all the buildings off the layout, plus I need to re-solder some disconnected feeders etc) but I hope to have everything reconnected by the end of the year.
I’ve also got the workshop extra messy because this project-in-process reminded me that I have a bunch of stuff I wanted to sell on eBay, so it’s all up on the counter waiting to get sold instead of hidden in under-layout hell boxes!
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