Layout

Well I did some work and came up with another layout possiblity. Rather then focus on a mainline switching operation I switched to a terminal switching operation. This sovled the problem of having trains come from both directions. Two different entrance tracks provides give me a reason to have multiple roads servicing the terminal area.

The layout features a 12.5 in. traverser to transfer trains from the staging area in back to the two entrance tracks. It is just long enough to squeeze on a GP-60 engine and two 50 ft. cars. The traverser is the area in orange. It will only have one track, but all four positions are shown.

The dark grey boxes are buildings. The light grey box is a viaduct. I am not sure if it is for cars or trains yet. It helps to block the view of the traverser from the rest of the layout. The light blue box is a sky board or some sort of view block to hide the staging area at the top of the layout from view.

I blocked out the layout into 9 power blocks, four in the staging area and five on the main layout. That was one of my regrets from the first layout was not blocking out anything so that I had to swap engines on and off tracks manually. With this I can have multiple engines on the layout, even though I will only be running one at a time. I can park an engine on a siding, turn off the power to the siding, then have another engine come through to do some switching.