Without really knowing it, I've been a longtime subscriber to Ellison's philosophy. I picked it up from the softcover Kalmbach book, "Track Planning for Realistic Operation", back in the 80's. That book may have actually credited him for the concept.
I designed my layout as a loop to loop operation, with staging yard built on a reverse loop. The "on stage" part of the layout forms the other loop, but it's very difficult to see that it's a loop, because the tracks come back together off stage, inside the helix. Trains only pass through each scene once. Go around the loop clockwise and you're heading west, counter clockwise and you're heading east.
It helps that I'm modeling a 60 mile section of the prototype at about 10:1 compression.
Actually, the railroads have evolved quite a bit since those books were written. Basic switching is still the same, but mainline operations have really changed.
Trucking and air travel have forced this. It's not a bad thing, it's just different from the 40's and 50's. Far fewer industries are served by rail, but the ones that are, make up for the losses with volume. The large modern railroads have been boiled down to their essence, by spinning off many of their branches to create short lines.
