Well my project today involved creating my version of "Savannah Harbor" which on my layout is simply a storage yard for rolling stock and engines that I like to run, but cannot stay on the main layout due to space. Its not an elegant solution but it beats trying to open unpack and the re-pack boxes every time I want to run a different train or some new cars. Here is a little photo vignette about my day today.
This was the starting point, just emptied the space (Marx freight house left to go) and moved stuff to another location to give me the open area I wanted to convert to the yard.
This was step 2, I covered the surface with grey foam board both for color and to provide some insulation to the top of the cabinets.
Step 3, after I got the foam board down (double stick tape) I began to tentatively arrange the buildings. My overall plan is that the piece of white wall behind the buildings will eventually have a "harbor scene" backdrop...I am thinking that this is a waterfront area along the Savannah River. Which today is a huge container port but has always been a shipping area.
Step 4: I got the tracks laid and put some "scenery" in place. You can see the Marx #422 Gantry Crane which straddles one track but can swing to cover the tracks to either side. This was a train show find in 2014 , knew I would find a use for it 
Here is another view of where I finished off today. I inserted a Marx control tower as a Yard Operations office. The two buildings are both Menards one is the Gas Station that is designed to fit against a flat wall. I did have to modify this somewhat as it came with a modern vintage tow truck that I had to remove and replace it with a 1940 vintage truck. The station is Menards new "suburban" station, it is very small and well detailed. In my imaginary world, it sees about 2-3 commuter runs a day via RDC bringing RR and Harbor workers down from the City and beyond. Likely needs some additional details and some workers, maybe tomorrow.
I will admit (full disclosure) that the big limitation to this yard is that it is not physically connected to my main layout. The multipurpose use of the space I have the layout just prevents a cross room bridge at this time. It really just serves as storage although I might power it separately for some switching fun later on. I would need to connect the leads with some switches, but I need something other than the 0-22 Lionel switches I had, they are way to big and take up too much space. Paul2 showed some switches above that look far more compact and might work vice the 0-22's
Enjoy the weekend, everybody try to keep healthy
Don McErlean
