Raised on the Erie Lackawanna Mainline- Supt. of the Black River Transfer & Terminal R.R.
Nothing says you have to build the layouts exactly as presented in the book. They are mostly for ideas.
I don't understand how you could get the 5x10 portion into an 8x8 room unless you tear the wall out between them and make it a 16x8 room. Is that what you are talking about? Even at that I don't see how one could curve the yard into a "U" as there would only be 1 foot to do it and still have a center of a "U".
Humm, the Big Panhandle, haven't thought about that in awhile. Actually that was my second layout. I built it in a spare bedroom in my quarters in England. The bedroom was long and narrow but I still ended up shortening the yard by about three feet and taking off the closet doors to gain some room. I did modify the yard, using the plan from page 86 of Track planning for realistic operation.
Now that I get out the track plan, I noticed one of my yards is somewhat similiar to the Big Panhandle's, and I didn't even look at that plan when designing my current layout.
As for pictures. Those were pre digital days and while some surely exist, they might be a bit hard to dig up and psoting them would cause another problem.
As mentioned, you can change/modify these plans. They do make good starting points as they are "operationally sound", but the location of specific tracks can be modified.
Tilden