@Paul Kallus posted:Wow, Holly, I love your mountain village, great job and magazine worthy in my opinion!
If I understand correctly, you want to add 2 more feet to the right side of the platform and have a train that runs on the rear-most elevated parts?
My former Christmas/year-round layout (still miss it...divorce is painful in many ways) had 4-levels and 3 can be seen in the picture below, in addition to some jerk who is standing in the background. One method to accomplish elevated trains in back of layouts is through the dogbone or eyeglass shape layout design. Picture a viewing a dogbone from a plan view that is wider on the ends and narrower in the middle. The wider parts, such as the raised mountain ends, facilitate track turnarounds, i.e., the circular part needed to get the train going in the opposite direction. The 2nd picture below shows the left-end of the dogbone. My layout was very complex due to the 4 levels with grades and turnouts connecting each -- each level of train action was essentially a concentric circle, with wider diameter tracks on the outside and each subsequent level had a smaller diameter track. Yours would not need such complexity.
You can also use a reversing loop at each end - but that will still require the dogbone shape. The easiest method I've seen in elevated rear-layout action is a bump and go trolley, whereby the trolley simply travels back and forth, hitting a bumper at each end which automatically reverses its direction.
Paul.
That was absolutely one of my favorite layouts!!! Hope one day you can recreate it.
