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Rethinking a few things

Some things work, others don't about the White River Junction yard. It remains the only layout section that hasn't been rebuilt�yet. (White ruler is for size reference!)

Some days I really wish I was one of those modelers who could design something I'd be happy with for 40 years�.like Jack Burgess. 
But I'm not. 
I could never actually "over plan" anything - we've all known modelers who are trapped in "analysis paralysis." My approach is a little more "Ready�Fire�.Aim!" but hey, it works for me. 
After spending several years and lots of hours building, rebuilding, and rebuilding again I'm finally happy with the "middle" of the railroad - basically the long peninsula down the center of the room. 
They say the sure-fire way to tell if something isn't satisfying shows in a distinct lack of progress. And any visitor to the basement can immediately identify where that area is on my layout - the main yard area. 

Here's a run down of the issues:
1. The White River Junction station is tucked into a reverse corner - and a portion of the platform is actually poking into the south end staging yard in the utility room. 

Issue #1 and #2: The position of the WRJ station. Note how the platform canopy actually ends up under the "hole."

2. The south end staging yard itself  - a stub ended yard that juts into the middle of the utility room. It's always in the way. Since it's an unfinished part of the basement where I do a lot of sawing and sanding and the ceiling is unfinished dust and dirt rain down on the track and the equipment in the yard. It drives me nuts. Enough said. 

Issue #3 and #4: Center of turntable is beyond arm's length in the corner. So operators don't use it since it's hard to see. Also, no room for even a "bas relief" roundhouse.

3.  To get the position of the turntable and engine servicing tracks in the correct orientation to the WRJ station the turntable ended up in the corner of the room - behind six or seven tracks and more than three feet from the edge of the layout. Guess I should have heeded the advice in the Kalmbach Locomotive Servicing Terminals book to keep the turntable within arm's reach! Whomever wrote that book was brilliant�.<g>
4. Because the turntable is shoved in the corner there's little room for a roundhouse or any kind - let alone a decent scale model of one. 

Issue #5: A little hard to tell here but the north yard throat is confusing to visiting operators - and the guy who built it!

5. To get the WRJ station trackage arranged in some semblance of the prototype required the station tracks to start about halfway down the long wall of the yard. In order to get the yard classification tracks to be close to train length meant the yard ladder starts on the next wall and each track curves 90 degrees with a compound yard ladder. Plus not all the yard tracks can be directly accessed from the main or A/D tracks. This overly complicated yard ladder confuses some pretty experienced operators. 

The next two issues are much more aesthetic/design related than the previous two: 

6. To access that staging yard I ended up with a huge slot in the wall - effectively masking and screening it is proving elusive - there's no easy way to hide something so wide. Adding a highway overpass would destroy the composition of the prototype scene. I've tried various ways to "soften" the transition - they work in photos but in person, well, it's tracks going through a hole in the wall. 
7. And this is much more aesthetic - there's lots of "countryside" and "small towns" on the layout - what's missing is a city-like element. Something that contrasts with the pastoral nature of much of the rest of the layout. 

Not sure I have the solutions to these items worked out in my head quite yet, but I've hired a consultant to provide some professional solutions to these problems. Luckily, as the treasury is plenty bare he works cheap!

Stay tuned.