> I'm going to tell you something you already know.
Yep...
> The fact is you don't have a lot of space for what you want,
> so you have to make compromises.
I'm well aware of that. I am making compromises. I guess the compromise I'm choosing to make is to have two or three reasonably realistic scenes, rather than trying to squeeze in 5 or 6 small scenes. I'd like to have a coal mine, and those Walther's steel mill buildings would be fantastic. But I also realize I don't have room for them...
> Many people don't use roundhouses because
> of the amount of space they take up.
Yes, I realize that choosing to have one, especially one that big, means it will pretty much dominate the layout and drive the design. On the other hand, my interest is steam. If I have a half dozen steamers, I'd like to have somewhere to park them and have them look good.
> As for the yard, not many of us have room for Conway
Conway? LOL! That yard track holds 6 50 foot cars. Or, if you're a modern era modeler, maybe 3 auto racks. Let's say I fill all 5 tracks with an average of 8 cars each. That's a whopping 40 cars, with the yard so plugged you can't do any switching. A more reasonable figure would be 30 cars, and that's 50 footers, longer cars mean less capacity of course. 30 cars is hardly a big yard.
> so once again we make compromises.
I did... No arrival tracks, no departure tracks, no caboose track. In fact, I still haven't figured out how an arriving train will even get into the yard. Shove the whole train uphill around a curve? Yuck... I think I'll need to make a run-around up there somewhere that can take a 10 car train. Even then the switching lead will be on a curve, and possibly a grade as well...
> ... it would look larger
Fine, but that doesn't help operations. I'd like to have a small yard where I can take a 10 car train and do some actual switching. Set out a few cars, pick up some others. A yard with a capacity of 35 or so cars will do that reaosnably well.
> When you go to make up your long trains, you'll just have
> to use two tracks and two cuts instead of one.
I'll still have to do that. I want to run trains of about 10 cars or so. None of those track will hold that many, even 50 footers. So I'll still have to double the cut. That's fine, it adds to the challenge of switching.
> That's one of the reasons for having as large a staging area as possible.
My current plan is to have 4 staging tracks (and 2 mains) on the shelf. They'll easily hold one long train, and possibly two short trains. As you said, they're for storage, the yard is for classification.
> have the diner or sleeping car in your passenger
> yard for passengers transferring.
I don't think I"m going to have room for a passenger yard, but that's one of the compromises.
> Compared to the majority of us, you have a lot of room.
I don't know about the majority, but yes, I've got some decent room.
> And like all of us, you have bigger ideas than space.
I think a lot of my problem is that I spend so much time around the real thing. I see how much space they take, how wide the curves are and just how much room even a small yard takes.
Here's an example. My current coal train is 12 cars long. Add an engine and caboose, and that works out to 9 or 10 feet long. It takes up much of the visible main tracks, yet when compared to the size of a typical coal train, it's downright small. Even so, I may cut it back to an 8 car train, just to be a bit shorter.
> Of course, you could have 4 times the layout if you switch to N scale.
Trust me, I've thought of that many times. But I've also considered switching to O or even G scale. When you spend a day on a real steam loco, even an HO engine looks tiny. I like how much you can do with N scale, but I don't like squinting to see whether it's a 4-8-4 or a 4-6-2...