@DoubleDAZ posted:John, I guess I missed something about the bridge being elevated. Obviously, you can't do that with a dual track bridge, so I just assumed the grade down to the bridge hadn't been finished and the elevated yard was a leftover from an experiment. I don't think it's practical to raise the yard, but then I'm not sure where you were going with that, so it's hard to comment further.
Since you seem to want different elevations around the layout, check out this version. I changed the base elevation to 1" so I could go down a bit with the part of the orange line that's covered and lower the grade a bit along the top down to the bridge. So, the yard and some other tracks are at 1" and the rest are as indicated. I also fiddled some more with the yard trying to make it somewhat functional using your 4-way switch. However, the yard being separated from the turntable and engines having to travel through the double crossover is far from ideal. Mind you, it can work, but you'll have to stop trains on the mainlines to do it.
Hi Dave, You did not miss anything about the bridge being elevated. At one point, the bridge was at a seven inch elevation to try and put in a loop under the bottom peninsula with sharper curves being hidden in a tunnel. So elevation there at this point isn't relative. Your assumption was correct in the grade being leftover.
Great job with setting the elevations and getting realistic grades. The yard and turntable are definitely an issue. I put turntable there to see how/if it fit and was then going to look at how the neck I would get the yard integrated. At this point, z scale is looking better, if I could only see things that small.
Not sure there is a fix for the yard/turntable issue. That list of givens and druthers needs to be done and tough decisions will need to be made.
