Florida ISL - Ocala

[Brakie]

If we put a small Pikestuff engine house on the end of the engine storage track, we would have the offices with the engine storage facility.

Could do that or maybe have the crew room there and a stand alone office building much like BLMA yard office.

Small layouts like that can be a ton of fun to plan and operate as a "job".

Example..
Your crew signs in at 6 AM the conductor looks over the day's work while the engineer fires up the (say) Alco S4..

They proceed to the interchange track to pick up the inbound cars and they switch them into setout order.

They proceed to pick up the caboose and off they go..

Upon returning to the interchange they drop the caboose and proceed to place all the outbound cars on the interchange.

They then proceed to the engine house where they fuel and then shut off the S4 turn in their paper work, sign out and go home.

That should help the operational enjoyment and probably take a 1- 1 1/2 hours to do at scale speeds and allowing time for the conductor to do his ground work.

The more I think about it the first plan with the engine house is the better if operated like a small 3-5 mile short line-fun miles between interchange and end of track.
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What on earth is a "fun" mile?

A "fun" mile is whatever the modeler wants it to be as long as it stays believable..

Example:

A single loop made by a train on a 4x8 foot layout can be a mile or as per your plan it can 3-5 miles or whatever the modeler decides.