What am I in for?

[VinnyV123]

Vinny: What about changing the leads from your turnouts as wide as you can and placing buildings for switching operations? Look at your hand, your fingers are nice and parallel but if you spread them as wide as possible and stick a factory or such between them, you can do switching. You could still have the outer main for the Amtrak and use the inner loop for switching to different industries.

I like this idea, but the main focus of the layout is a passenger rail service. There is to be a town and whatnot, but as for the yard, all there will be is an engine facility. Like I said, my track plan had changed, and now I have to apply these changes.

 

[Cjcrescent]

I like this idea, but the main focus of the layout is a passenger rail service. There is to be a town and whatnot, but as for the yard, all there will be is an engine facility. Like I said, my track plan had changed, and now I have to apply these changes.

The layout can still be centered on passenger trains. But you add a small local train that has to switch some local industries, while staying out of the way of the passenger trains. The train can start on a section of track, long enough for the train, coming into the outer main from the layout's edge. The train has to navigate it way across those 2 busy mains, just to get where it can start the switching. Then staying out of the way, after a period of time, the local has to return the way it came, back onto the interchange track. Here using the famous 0-5-0, you can add new cars to the local, turn the loco around, remove and add a new loco to the next local, rearrange the train, etc. This technique on the interchange track has been used by British modelers for decades. Its called a fiddle yard. It doesn't matter whether its 1 track or 10 tracks.