John, You would want to turn both the locomotive and tender coupled together. It would could be a real pain to unhook some tenders from their locomotives, and I have never heard of it done before on the prototype or models. I think the same would hold for any AB units for similar reasons. I don't have an AB set out to see how long they are. Less tracks off the turntable would be good to eliminate the curved ones. The 4-way switch for the yard saves space, but then you would need a runaround track on each side of the yard. I have 4% grades on my layout, and they are working alright on my short trains. I'm sure you would like to run longer trains than I can. I setup a temporary track and tried it at different grades with each of my engines pulling cars to see what would work. Remember that it takes a little more pulling power on grades than straightaways.
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