Firstly Hello and Welcome Chew86.
With regard to your idea of a brewery loading dock and having to use bridge plates to load the outer cars, you may like to check out the late Carl Arendt's website on micro and small layouts at <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.carendt.com">http://www.carendt.com</a><!-- m -->, where there is an article and photo about a real brewery switching puzzle.
Basically there was a line of doors at the loading dock and the boxcars were spotted on transfer plates and slid over to the door ways. The reason for this was because cars were loaded with different product at each door and the speed with which the product could be loaded required a means to move the full cars without disturbing the other cars being loaded.
Check out "A Pony Keg of Coors" on the Micro Layouts Using No Switches page.
I am sure that this real world example will get the creative juices flowing. I even thought about how I would build such a layout and I dont even drink.
The rest of the site is a literal gold mine of small and micro layout ideas and solutions to make your brain sizzle.
Mark
P.S Somewhere on the site there is also a photo of that or a similar operation where you can see detail of the transfer table beams the boxcars ride on.
Found it; The Real Coors Transfer Table, Scrapbook Page 83a.
