My initial attempt at laying out Chenoa and the mountains was a dismal failure. While the engines would make the grade with a car or two only, operation was no fun at all. Because there was an open grid benchwork underneath that meant I had to install a net under the whole thing or suffer the consequences of engines hitting the deck. So I reworked this:

And now we have what is pictured below. We lost the 8+ percent grades as well as the open grid and went with foam. Now we have a much larger yard with a runaround and a more workable mountain area. We had to expand the radius on the curve also to allow all of my motive power to make the turn.
 
with a larger yard and a  more workable mountain area operation and just running trains is more fun.

Happy railroading.