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Jarrell, RE Run arounds: A lot of people on the forum overlook the need for these in the track plans I see posted. To explain why you need them it is helpful to define a couple of terms: Facing point move and trailing point move. A facing point move is any turn out that relative to the direction of the train travel the locomotive has to pull inhto the siding head first. The locomotive is said to be facing the points. A trailing point move is a siding where relative to the direction of train travel the locomotive will back into the siding. Here the points are trailing behind the loco. You can see that any siding can have both moves depending on which direction you appoach it . Consider what happens during each move: Trailing point: This is real easy because the loco backs into the siding to get the cars and then pulls them out, backs them onto the train and keeps on movinig in the direction he was originally heading. Any moves to drop off and pick up cars are pretty easy. Facing point: Now we are in trouble. The loco pulls in head first to get the cars and pull them out . The cars are on the front of the loco and the rest of the train is behind the loco. Unless the train wants to run the cars in front of the loco the rest of the trip, the loco must be able to get in front of the cars or run around them. In order to do this there must be a double ended siding that the loco can park the cars on and run past them back onto them and continue on. Any single spur from a mainline will have this problem depending on direction of travel for the approaching train. One direction will be trailing (no problem) the other wiill be facing point (needs run around) Now most guys reading this are saying "no big deal, I'll just always make sure I switch trailing point". This can be done, but many times may not be possible given direction of train travel on the main. It also means that you rob some flexibility from the track plan and are forced to switch the same way and run trains from the same direction the whole time leading to boredom with the completed layout because of operational limitations. Try out the plan with some cars on paper to get a feel for what I am talking about. Not every spur will have a run around, but large industries or major switching areas (say a bunch of industries) will generally have a run-around. In terms of running the layout you need a few or switching becomes boring (or worse, frustrating) and operation becomes mundane and predictable. I tore out my last layout partly because I hadn't planned for these.... Hope this helps....
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