Now that my wife and I have finished our summer project of rebuilding the shower, I can now refocus my effort back to the new layout.  

The first picture shows a partial view down the peninsula of both staging yards (A &b).  The scale drawing that was shown in the previous blog post documents (as close as possible) what was built since I obtained the Railmodeller software after the track was put down.

 

Each yard consists of 10 tracks with the innermost track (closest to the vertical 2X4s that will support the main level) being the designated thoroughfare/continuous run track.  That track was chosen since it was the shortest track of all of the tracks in each of the yards. All of the turnouts (Peco) in the staging yards that are within 18 inches of the edge of the table will be manually controlled by finger.   Any turnout not capable of being reached will be controlled by a manual Blue Point turnout controller as indicated in the next couple of pictures.

 

One of the tasks that I did before deciding on how to construct the yard ladder was to test size the length of trains. There were two reasons for doing this: first - to ensure that I would be able to safely store the trains, both passenger and freight, that I plan to run on the layout, on each of the staging tracks (within the fouling points of both ends of the siding), and second - to determine which trains would fit on each of the staging tracks so that I could designate which train would go on which track and fit. The picture below shows an example using the ATSF LSX (live stock) with 4 FT-A/Bs, 18 stock cars, and a caboose.

The attached charts show the passenger and freight trains that I plan to run and their routing on the layout as well as the initial sizing of trains and the lengths of sidings.

I am now working on wiring the track and will continue to build the support tables around the room to the other spline helix (see previous blogs concerning the building of spline helices).

That's all for now.