Because of below I took the last two weeks off from the diesel shed build but will get back to it next Saturday.
I was running locomotives around the layout to double check power and ground. From a way earlier post I had talked about a half John Allen 'timesaver' track game I installed on the edge of the layout. The intentions were noble however with the number of turnouts and short track I came to the conclusion while running my bigger locomotives that the track game would work however the rest of the time I could not really do much with that section. Because of the position of the three double turnouts I had little room to maneuver the larger loco without having one truck on the point rails in some cases. I decided to modify the track design by deleting one double turnout. Technically the design is no longer a 'timesaver' but I have gained an spur for an engine shed plus a caboose track.
The old design is shown below. The crane is on the left side of the track design. It was impossible to maneuver the steam loco to the track where the cabooses are. Plus the loco's tender was sitting on top of point rails. I deleted the double turnout between the tracks with the cabooses and the steam loco, moved the double turnout from the lead track and the track with with the loco further down the lead track.
The new design is shown below. The crane is now on the track closest to the lead track. The spur on the left side will have the engine house. I hope to fit the coal tower and a sand house on that spur. If I can then the track in the middle will have hoppers delivering coal to the tower. The other end of the track will be where the ash dumps into a gondola. The caboose track is where the UP caboose resides. A locomotive will be backed into the engine house track for 'maintenance'. A switcher loco will make up consists on the yard track and pull them out on the lead track. It will then disconnect and move on the crane track. Another switcher will then push the consist out of the yard lead track to the main line where the steam locomotive will be re-positioned and waiting. Switcher 2 will then go back to the yard and switcher 1 will grab a caboose and attach it to the end of the consist.
An RR-Track design is shown below. Some diesels will be stored on the blue yard track at the bottom. If I want to use them for a consist I will roll one out to the main track first then repeat the building of the consist mentioned above. The shorted blue track on the lower right will hold the switch engines.
