Fixing a Loop Problem

 

An area of my layout fairly unfinished is the new passenger terminal area.  As you can see in the photo, there's not a lot happening in this area.  I had an idea for this area, which I'll explain below, but it wasn't really something I was excited about.  As you can tell, there's a lot of space surrounded by a circle of track, and that's my challenge.

One of the things I've noticed in a lot of layout designs is that they attempt to hide their loops from view.   In a way, I don't like to NOT see the trains that I enjoy running, but on the other hand, the tighter than prototype radii aren't really that visually interesting.  The other problem, and I think the real issue I have with this approach, is that you end up fitting buildings or other scenery inside of a circle, which isn't realistic at all - particularly when your trying to do a lot of urban environments like my layout.

My original concept for this area was to have a road from the backdrop area cross the tracks near the back wall via a bridge, and then decline down to the track grade, where the station and other urban elements would be.  Unfortunately (and like my downtown area), this puts all the buildings, roads, etc...at the same grade as the tracks, resulting in a 'looped in' area of buildings.  I already have this 'feature' on the downtown section, so I wasn't thrilled with repeating this.

My second idea was to elevate the station to be at the same grade as the background buildings, which elements the awkward decline after the bridge to the statin area, but would require a retaining wall of sorts between the track and the elevated urban area.   The disadvantage with this approach is that the urban area is still stuck in a 'circle of track' although it would be a bit more improved given the retaining wall.

What I think I like the best (and hinted at above) is to cover most of the loop...this removes an uninteresting curve view of the trains, but has the benefit of allowing me to do a much more interesting urban area in and around the passenger station.  The track will be open and easily accessible from the side underneath this area as well, so cleaning and maintenance will not be a problem.

The big drawback with this solution is that it would be very difficult to access a switch on the far side of the layout that leads to a siding along the back wall (since it would be covered with the elevated streets and buildings).  I believe that every turnout should be easily accessible as  possible, and even with some creative engineering, getting to the switch for cleaning or troubleshooting would still be a hurdle.

The solution to the switch location problem is...move the switch!  In fact, there is enough space (and I have enough excess track sitting around) to actually double-track the whole curve and allow access to the long siding (and make it LONGER!) by placing the switch (potentially a double crossover) up to the front of the layout.  The red line below shows the new radius....

This solution I think is the best of all worlds.  I'm not thrilled with adding too many switches in highly visible areas, but I do like the fact that I will have a very long siding now, and I will have a good footprint to work with for the area surrounding the passenger terminal.

This will be the final part of the layout to get some finishing done to it, and I'm excited to get to work on the passenger terminal because I think it will be interesting to work on.   Its funny how the right 'solution' for a layout sometimes requires that you do nothing for awhile until you get to the point where you know what you want to do!