Fiddling with layout ideas

[sailormatlac]

I'm guessing you are building in HO? You could do so much more in that small space in N scale. That said I would stick with diesel as the turntable or wye is a huge waste of space in such a small area. Even if you run steam I still wouldn't have the TT or wye as on small rural branch lines they usually just ran em' forward then backed them back down the branch. The low traffic flow didn't justify the extra expense when the train was so short the loco could pull it easily enough going backward.

I must admit my train of thoughts isn't far from yours.

The prototype, Hereford Railway was cut from its connection with Maine Central. CPR took over for about 20 years and as far as my researches can go, they never took care of turning the locomotives at the new "terminal" that was just an old ordinary ex-mainline station. The original roundhouse was on the US side at Beecher Falls. CPR cut the line about 2 stations before the boundary.

The line wasn't very profitable and CPR was very reluctant to operate it. Under these circumstances, they wouldn't have put money into building a new turntable or a new wye in 1927. Your scenario makes a lot of sense. That means they would have run reverse for about 20 miles! Realistic for a 5 cars mixed train? I've seen many pictures of logging railroad doing such things. In this case, most locomotives CPR operated for regional service were either their proverbial 4-6-0 or 4-4-0 from the 1880s.

EDIT: But hey, I've been searching like crazy a pictures of a mixed freight running reverse and never saw one... weird.

Matt