Mountains and carfloats

There's  some neat examples of carfloats on lakes in remote areas of Canada. Mark Dance has one on his N scale layout....DaveB

Exactly

Somewhere buried on this PC I have pictures of a CP carfloat operation that is the inspiration for this scene.

Rats

I was hoping you would have drilled a large hole in each end of the aquarium and installed a clear plastic tube  through it and run trains under the water.

In a raspy Brando voice, you can "run trains with the fishes."

Or if you lived in England, you could have "sleepers with the fishes."

CP

Yes it was in western Canada, I believed they floated a FM roadswitcher  to whatever branch it connected to.

The real risk here tis that that opens the opportunity for a portable layout that also has a float dock and it can be used as a standalone layout or as a destination for the layout float.

I have a float on my layout and I have thought about building a "Carney Point" switching module that would be the other end of the float operation.

Furlow or Frary?

I would think Frary, of C&DR fame, would be more car floaty.

Plan

I was going to suggest moving the switch in the runaround to the left end of the runaround to give more room in the siding, but after "switching" it a couple times, that really won't be necessary if you shove cars off the float all the way down the siding onto the tail track.  If you had room to move the main track switch one "float length" to the left, you could pull a train in there and switch the whole thing without fouling the main.

Inspiration

Here we go, Slocan Lake

Actually, "Furlow" is meant to be a far off destination that the one hidden staging track represents. I have not thought of a name for the harbor but with my penchant for naming stuff after famous Model Rails, something like "Hayden-Frary Harbor" would definitely fit.

More float

Would you consider eliminating the staging track and going with a much larger carfloat?  Maybe use the float as your entire staging?

Anything is up for consideration

This is just idea stage, I don't even know if I'll build anything at all, there's still plenty to be done on the existing layout. It is worth noting though that my little steam era line probably wouldn't support a much bigger ferry than the prototype CP one shown above. The thought of this being a separate little layout is a good one too. If I do end up moving and expanding my layout when we build a new house, there would probably be some down time with no layout at all and this could be an interesting little distraction for awhile, building a car float and tug boat etc.

Fantastic idea

Fantastic idea Michael. This is getting me excited about building a car( floa)t. That is, a car float on a cart that one can wheel from your main layout to another, fully disconnected branchline. Wouldn't that be fun? Sure, getting the rails to line up just right every time would require being careful about "docking the cart" ... just like the real thing!

In terms of an ops session, the actual work would be quite substantial and interesting, and it would be particularly useful for someone who has run out of room in their main layout room but found some space for expansion elsewhere .

Now that I have read all the

Now that I have read all the replies, I realize that I'm just echoing Dave1905. 

Michael, I like the track plan. The only reaction I have is, I like how the layout of the switches along the shore lends itself to a curving coastline. However, one thing to watch out for and test before going too far is, 2-3 consecutive S curves across your turnouts to get to each of the float tracks might cause derailments when backing. I've found that more than 1 S-curve and I have problems. The easy way to get rid of the S curves is to flip the turnouts ... but then I'd want to look at how that affects the elegance of the "jaggedness" of your coastline. But it looks nice!

Coast line

It is possible to both accommodate the coast line and the S curve elimination.  Move the switch to eliminate the curves, then put all three tracks (2 runaround and the lead ) on a series of gentle curves to follow the shore (well really the shore will follow the track, but it will look the other way around).

If the lead into the runaround was extended, the whole area could be lowered slightly, giving a visual vertical separation and would create a visual difference from the tracks following the shore and the straight "main line".

Fear of S curves...Essaphobia?

I'm always open to suggestion but there really isn't anymore S curve present on this plan than anywhere else on the rest of my layout. I run small locos and  short equipment. 40 foot boxcars and less, not even 50 footers. I can run my entire roster of operable cars (a 10 car train) backwards and forwards across my entire layout. I'm proud of that too, I worked hard to get it to that point. No offense to anyone  but in my personal experience, the fear of S curves is slightly overblown. Then again, I've never run really long equipment and I plead ignorance on how it may react to them. At any rate, if I decide to build this, the plan shown is just a starting point. I do want it to remain simple but believe me, I will test and retest everything and make sure it all runs through. If it doesn't then I will make alterations. As much as I love SCARM, I'm never really comfortable designing a final plan until I have the physical track at my disposal and can work things out right on the baseboard.

I'm going to think on this a few days. As much as I enjoy building new scenes and feel I want to do this, I have tons of details to add to existing scenes, rolling stock to weather, rolling stock to build and tune up, further implementation of my DCC ++ system and also a collaborative project on the horizon that I'm doing with a couple of other modelers. My plate is pretty full right now.

Banned?

"Or if you lived in England, you could have "sleepers with the fishes."

My only suggestion would be using a wye for the car float. 

S curves?

Carfloat terminals often had quite sharp curves due to commonly  being in congested city waterfronts. S curves shouldn't be a problem unless one is running modern long cars with lots of overhang from truck to couplers. The speeds are typically very slow so some carfloat operation in the cities used 100 foot or less radius and got 40 foot cars around them......DaveB 

Michael, I think your car

Michael, I think your car float idea would be a great addition to your layout. You could gain quite a lot of operation on your layout with the car float being used for staging and the siding above being used for a large industry or two. The industries could be shallow relief, flats, or a photo backdrop. You will likely enjoy having the additional area on your layout to work on, as sooner or later you will have everything finished to your satisfaction.

 I will be looking forward to watching what develops.

Visited the Kootenays ...

... and those car floats, well what little is left of them, a few times. love your car float idea. 

Sad to see that era gone. I think the 1950’s were about as good as it gets. 

island

I have planned an island in a corner to reach by ferry

I started the boat a while back but it has been sitting idle while i build the layout room

My long term is to make a cart that uses RC parts to drive the ferry at layout height, from the main to the island to pick up logging cars and deliver supplies to the loggers

Wye

That's a good idea for the car float, I don't know how it slipped my mind to look for it in the track library and see how it would fit. I'll revise it and give it a look.

Thanks everyone for all the comments. I'm going to let this one "percolate" for a few days.

For those who might not have seen

Here's a track plan of the entire railroad as it exist right now. The tracks that lead off the baseboard are the staging on each end, Furlow and Fugate. Lot's of sharp curves and a 4% grade. I did this plan after the fact, with the railroad already being built. It's pretty close except the passing siding to the left of the engine terminal has a good bit more flowing curves through both routes but it's the best I could do with the software. This should give everyone a good idea of how the harbor area would relate to the rest of the railroad.

Changed to a wye

I adjusted the plan a little bit to use a wye turnout feeding onto the float. I played around a bit with adding a tail track back to the left, opposite the float but it means yet another turnout and took some rearrangement of the plan. I can't see any real advantage to doing it except adding a small industry and another car spot.

Big Time Ferry Operations in the Past and Today

Look into the SP Ferry operation across Carquinez Strait east of San Francisco Bay:

http://cprr.org/Museum/Solano/index.html

The whole train including engines was carried across the strait. (I model Port Costa in 1950's. 20 years after the SP bridge was built over the strait at Martinez. Only pilings remained of the ferry terminal.) 

They had a ferry operation across the Mississippi at New Orleans as well. 

Modern ferry operations still provide the Alaska Railroad with it's interchange connection to the "southern 48" rail network. The car ferry they used to use in the 1980's (when I worked for the owner Crowley Maritime) utilized two 100X400 foot barges with eight tracks on each. It ran from Seattle 1200 miles across the Gulf of Alaska to Whittier on Prince William Sound in Alaska. Two barges in each tow with an 6500 HP tug using a tandem tow with the second barge tow wire going below the first barge using hydroplanes on the tow wire (definitely not rope.) The tugs carried boxes of baseball bats used in an hourly watch to knock icicles off the railings and decks. This is a reference to moving the Alaska Railroads passenger car fleet to Alaska from Seattle. http://www.trainweb.org/ultradomes/features/bargeloading.html

There is a ship ferry operation carrying 40-50 railroad cars at a time that goes from Mobile, Alabama to Vera Cruz, Mexico. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CG_Railway.

Pier 4

If you want a little more "bang for your buck", here's a pier you can model.  Its the Naval Weapons Station Earle NJ.   The are loading ammunition on the battleship USS Wisconsin.  Not there is a platform on both sides of the pier to off load munitions directly from the boxcars to the ships.

There is a good chance that some of the boxcars originated at Navy, OK.

A bit out of my wheelhouse

Just a limited amount of space left! I think I'm much more along the lines of the CP Slocan Lake operation and even then I'm many years earlier than that in my time frame and a really loose freelancer. As usual, most of this will come from my imagination with an occasional glance at the prototype to make sure I'm not getting too far out there. Wow, how much space would it take to even begin to model that Naval pier?