To reply to your question:

- There will be some staging.   It will be on the lower right end of the plan in what will be New Athens(it will actually be behind the main line there.

- The yard there is large and it was VERY busy.   This is the biggest compromising I have to do.   However, the yard and staging are not as important to me as to the real RR.   I am going to make a very scrunched up yard that functions somewhat like the prototype, but will mainly be used to set the scene for locals who know what the yard looks like behind the diesel shop/ready tracks/RIP facility.   I am trying to get the section of my old yard in place to know exactly how I want to enter it.   It will be funky, but neat in its own way(will even have the hump and retarder(non functional)   much more to come on that later.

- The left most blob is going to be empty, but that is how I want it there...mostly scenic on the left side the right side comes into Belleville.   The blob on the right will house the entire Peabody River King mine loadout area.  It will be the centerpiece of operations if I can pull it off properly.   There will be a duck-under into that, but the layout is about 54 inches high, and I will make about a two foot wide area that is fairly narrow to facilitate that.   Not interested in the pain of a lift bridge at this point(only 50....can still duck(walk))

-Single deck.   More than enough rr for me alone(first try was double deck and was too much work and track)   For a small section of a secondary main it was very interesting.   My train crew guys said they occaisionally doubled Belleville hill going East with empties, and West with loads.   Almost all trains except the local and the pig trains had helpers coming out of the yard(going up the Miss. river bluffs)

Re: staging and small yard.   I don't envision large numbers of crew coming over, so the staging trains are not as important.   The local and the River King jobs(there were usually 3 tricks of them all using the same power) should be more than enough for a while...throw in an occaisional through train for interest, add salt and cook for 3 hours at 375.....oops...

just posted some pics of the benchwork for E. St Louis on another blog thread

What track plan are we talking about?  Is it posted somewhere?

Some guys obviously have seen the track diagram, but this dummy can't. I've searched the MRH site for posting pictures and viewing pictures, but found nothing helpful.

Firefox shows a big blank space.

IE and Chrome show a box with a little icon, that gives a menu when right-clicked, but nothing comes of those items.

What am I missing?

Running Windows 8.0

Thank you,

DrJolS

In the post entitled First Cut.    Just the mainline in rough form.   I can see it fine from Internet Explorer and Chrome.

Thank you, Loren, but I should have said:

In the first post entitled First Cut:

Firefox shows a big blank space.

IE and Chrome show a box with a little icon, that gives a menu when right-clicked, but nothing comes of those items.

Looks like doc-in-CT has the same problem. I also am in CT. Does that matter?!

DrJolS

send a quick email to ljcasey1 @ gmail.com (minus the spaces) and I'll send you it as an attachment