I have been reading the GAZETTE since its very beginning and am also a multiscaler. The idea of a pizza layout started when fiddling around with Shapeways On18 Shay bodies and Tenshodo drive units. Space is always scarce because I am modelling in my office. It is entered through the door of my wife’s shoe cabinet. The door is only 17 inches wide limiting the height of any layout being built in my office. With that limitation my pizza layout was built in two parts — the base and the mine — that could be assembled after being moved out of the room.

The base is a 24-inch plywood disk with PECO 009 flex track with three turnouts that are manually thrown. The inner radius is 9 inches plus a third rail added for On30 track.

I had a Classic Miniatures Grand Central Gold Mining Company kit, with a Wiseman Models interior kit. They had sat on the shelf for quite a while, so I decided to assemble them for my pizza layout.

Assembling the mine was straight forward following the directions closely, and it is on a Styrofoam disc that fits into the base of the layout.

One advantage of a pizza layout is that you can actually finish it. I am turning 80 in 2021 and hate to leave incomplete work.

I took my pizza layout to the Narrow Gauge show at Bolzano / Klobenstein in Italy in 2019 where it was a big hit. It shows what can be done in a small space, is manageable, and can be built on a limited budget.

I am still modelling a 7- x 15-foot 1:20.3 layout, two British file box layouts, and a 2- x 3-foot O and On3 layout.