
just finishing one or two things off - I had not forgotten that you asked me whether I made drawings/sketches etc. before building anything. With the wiring I tend not to as often when wiring up some things I have found need to be sorted out on site as it were, so wiring is planned as systems and the coloured wire and thickness of wire decided early on for whatever is being built. I have not entirely made my mind up yet whether to go DCC or not due to the costs involved as it is perfectly possible to get good slow running etc. without it but sound etc. might be fun to do and the pleasure factor is what sometimes motivates me so I have used heavier wire for track power which allows me to go down this route if I finally decide what to do. I do avoid using single strand wire in exhibition layouts even for low voltage circuits like lighting for the buildings. I have had a few unfortunate experiences with broken wires over the years and try to avoid it now. If you are interested I am using 24 strand/0.2 wire for the track power and 16 strand/0.2 wire for my point and signal power and may go down to 7 strand for my wiring for building lights and situation sound.
I have used different coloured feeds for different areas as I intend having the layout sectioned even when I may go DCC otherwise if there is a fault it does help track down where it is. I had a friend who had taken out all his track sections before a show and joined everything up going DCC and suffered a complete failure at a show which was not resolved until he returned home. Particularly important if you have a number of operators running a large system. You don't want one person causing a short which will knock out what everyone else is busy doing. So putting cut outs in each section helps with this problem.
As for the buildings, I do often draw them up and enjoy doing that the old fashioned way using a drawing board and pencils etc. I attach a photograph of the drawing for the water tank. It is not a scan , just a photo, as I hope maybe to have an article published some time on the layout but happy to show you the drawing in this form. Sorry the photo is not particularly good as it was taken last night in not very good lighting conditions

Hope this is useful Tim.
