The design offers a reasonable amount of interesting switching and operations.
Cars arrive via the car ferry or the interchange tracks at left, are switched into the appropriate industries, and moved back
out again after loading or unloading. The combination of facing- and trailing-point spurs mean that some planning is needed
to avoid a lot of extra moves. As on many shortlines, the switch crew might use the interchange yard at the left to do some
of this classification of cars. This could also be done on the two tracks of the runaround at the right.
In the final revision of the plan, we decided to link this deck to the main
deck by a long ramp track, but the main elements of the design remained. The version shown here might be the basis for a fun
stand-alone switching shelf layout or could be added as an extra deck to an existing plan. Without the constraints of the
existing dioramas, substituting flats for some of the structures would allow room for larger industries and a few additional
tracks.
A number of my clients have chosen the convenience and "future-proof" characteristics
of sectional track systems like Unitrack, even for fairly large designs. This small portion of a larger design shows that
it is possible to come up with something different from the "regular" appearance of typical sectional track layouts while
offering interesting operating challenges.
