Well at least it's closer to the Friday night than last week's entry ended up being. So the Thomas part: my daughter has had a chance to run her Thomas without issues on the over and under HO layout. Hornby's 0-6-0 Thomas has quite a long wheel base for the 15" radius inner track on the over and under HO layout so track joins needed to be tweaked for smooth running. Of course this has pay offs for all locomotives and rolling stock too, everyone runs better over those joins now.
The over and under HO layout now has a tray underneath courtesy of my most recent Bunning's outings: some 12mm plywood and some pine edging/reinforcing. The tray allows me to store unused rolling stock on a piece of track under cover also storing tools, spares, parts and so on. The plan that has already started is to then clear off the tops of the workbenches so that they can be workbenches not just storage.
The second piece of 1830mm * 945mm ply has been divided up into two Ls and some carefully planned pieces to create a layout 1260 * 2115mm with a 630 * 1485mm cutout in the centre where scenery, backdrops or even a male 30 something waist line will fit.
The lesson about measuring twice and cutting once was learnt when making the tray which needed to be shortened after being initially cut, that would have left me with more spare for the auto loading facility :-( As to the cuts I made to divide up a whole board into the layout with cut out in the centre, I made all the cuts I had thought I needed but when laying out the pieces, things did not look right: I had to cut off "E" as marked on the pictures below (not very to scale, the shapes are the important part) Now if you have a look, it is possible to mark out cuts that did not require an extra cut for the "E" piece, BUT this would have required a cut that did not start from an edge and would have required jigsawing or similar, not a nice quick cut with the circular saw.
So while I wait for my bridge track, I have track plans to consider and how to layout the auto facility diorama...and bridge work for my N scale shelf layout when I feel keen enough.
1830mm * 945mm board marked out for cutting: 
Resultant 2115mm * 1260mm layout with hole for operator and/or scenery in the middle (width of each layout section is 315mm):
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