I've been working with
@DeltaBravo on his layout plan and we were talking about ways to better utilize his staging deck.
He's modeling the east end of the WM, and so the east end staging yard represented Baltimore and Port Covington.
We were talking about how the current plan works ok, but there's much more that could be done to get better use out of the space.
Now, y'all know how I care about "recreating reality", but in this case, we got started thinking about how to use the space to both serve a practical need (more on-layout storage of inactive cars) and an operational one "wouldn't it be nice of those eastbound coal and grain trains 'did something' at the end of their run?".
So that got us thinking about how to recreate that experience without being overly concerned about prototype track arrangements or even appearance.
And with that, I came up with this fever dream.
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Traffic enters from the layout at left. The normal looking yard at the bottom is for fully staged trains, but it's the blue and green track that's interesting.
The blue tracks represent the "dead train storage": where stuff like anachronistic Amtrak or other "I want to run it but don't feel like putting it away" stuff can hide. They're dead end tracks that wrap around a curve and just end where they run out of room around the bend.
The yellow tracks represent the "put your train away" aspect: where a train that made its run around the layout pulls in, then gets split up and spotted on those yellow yard tracks on the left (only a few of which will likely actually be built) that represent the leads to the dumpers and elevators.
The green tracks are stuff that's used for both uses: the lead for the one use provides a runaround at the other (so the power can grab the caboose).
It's a bit unorthodox, but I kinda like it!
What do you guys think?
