Squeezing in one night a week over the last few weeks I've managed to get the new yard operational. All of the track is not laid yet so I still am lack my three storage tracks, but the arrival/departure, run-around, caboose track, engine track and yard lead/throat are all up and running. I took some time last night to do some switching to see how it all played and I was quite pleased. For such a compact yard it seems to work very well. It was also unexpectedly easy and satisfying to use the throttle to control all of the turn-outs in the yard. The biggest challenge is knowing the turnout number address to control. At the moment I'm cheating and have bits of masking tape with the numbers near the throw-bar. I may consider putting a diagram on the back-drop I plan to mount. This would be a bit un-conventional, but much easier to glance at and still keep an eye on the tracks, as opposed to looking down at a control panel or the fascia.
You can see that the A/D track has a train almost ready to go with the switcher still on point. Two cabooses are in their hole and some additional cards (and Thomas) are in storage on the run-around/switching lead. The road engine is sitting on a temporary piece of track which will be the permanent engine track. All that is left is the switcher needs to grab a caboose, the road engine can pull the train forward and the switcher will tag the caboose on the end of the train as it leaves the yard for the main.
Next goals are to finish up the track laying and get that all operational, then I'd like to get a backdrop in place separating the town from the yard. Once that is all in place I can start in on some scenery while continuing to test the track-work. I'd also like to get some waybills set-up so that I can do some basic operations between the yard and town.
