Could you make each track of the four track loop seperate reversing sections? Only restriction would be that trains could not enter or exit the same track at the same time, that's a bunch of reversers but just trying to find a way for it to work.
It’s one of those things that came to me the other night while falling asleep - I’m not doing the trivial “connect both mains with a loop” which is quite easy to wire. And every idea I come up with, I end up determining it won’t work.
I’ve gotten to the point of toying with dead end staging tracks insid the loop and making the loop a simple single track one which then can easily be a reverse section. But it depends how far into the laundry area I can go to see if the tracks will be long enough. And even so there may only be room for 3 in each direction. Not really enough. Restaging wouldn’t be too difficult, back out the train, run it through the loop, then back in to the opposite direction staging track with the loco facing out. If I can squeeze in 4 tracks each way, I can probably make it work since many trains will be turns originating in the main yard rather than originating off stage. Might be a case to use Peco radius turnouts instead of #6’s to get more staging tracks in.
—-Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
I have the exact same arrangement except that I don't have nested loops on the end of the dogbone. I have been thinking about your arrangement and do not have a solution other than to make the whole thing a reversing section then restrict arrivals and departures such that you don't have more than one train entering/leaving the loops at the same time.
(edit - deleted proposed solution because it would not work)
Paul D
N scale Washita and Santa Fe RailroadSouthern Oklahoma circa late 70's
My planned basement layout is, if drawn schematically, a dogbone with multiple crossovers along the shank. Standard procedure for this sort of thing is to make the loops on the ends reverse sections and just wire the shank part as a double track main so everything is the same phase. But I have added a wrinkle. Since I don;t have room for linear staging tracks to one side of the loop, I am making the loops the staging - instead of just one track looping around and connecting the east and west mains, there will be 3 or 4 nested loops,. joint back to one just before the loop reconnects to the mains. Since this is staging, it's VERY likely that a train may be entering staging from the east main at the same time another is leaving staging on the west main. So the whole thing, all the tracks, cannot be the reversing section.
SO - where to place the reverseing sections?
--Randy