I believe your initial idea about putting a curved bridge across the access aisle as shown at the upper left of your drawing may be a challenge to build (as a lift-up section requiring a precise fit) or [even worse] become a physical/medical barrier issue for you and visitors if you and they must scramble under it if placed as a permanent feature.
As a now-80-years-old hobbyist, I can tell you through experience that agility disappears sooner than you want or might think. Enjoy the railroad without duck-under contortions likely to send you to a chiropractor's office.
That left side branch of the layout could contain three LONG stub sidings to store long trains ready for a call to service. Or two LONG stub sidings with action accessories placed between those sidings, for example:
Culvert Loader and Culvert Loader pair
Oil Drum Loader
Sawmill
Barrel Loader
Conveyor Belt Log Loader
"Up and Over" Log Loader
Coal-handling accessories (although messy, they're fun!)
Experienced designers advise layout builders to create "real-life reasons" for trains to travel around the layout, as:
Lumbermen harvesting logs in the forest and loading them on log-dump cars bound for a sawmill at a distant location
Coal-loading Tipple that loads coal into bottom-dump coal hoppers bound for a power plant on the other side of a layout
Oil derricks and storage tanks that feed oil into tank cars headed to a refinery
Uranium mine tunnel with lighted "radioactive" containers leaving that site and bound for a Nuclear Power Station
Diary farm with a siding to load raw milk into Dairy reefers bound for a processing plant with a milk platform alongside.
Kids love to operate these action accessories. The constant action is much more hands-on fun for them (you too) than merely watching trains run around endless loops.
Carry on ...
Mike Mottler LCCA 12394
