SSW Shelf Layout - You comments

[FCIN]

This is shaping up nicely. Looks like this plan would work pretty well as long as you make sure you have enough room to be able to pull all the cars from the food processor and still be able to switch the inbound cars. As long as your inbound cars and outbound cars from that industry are usually fewer than the capacity of the industry, you should be fine. Realistically, at most industries, you would rarely have every car spot full and be re-spotting an equal number.

I had thrown together this little sketch of one idea I had mentioned, but your latest revision looks darn good!.
    Just remember, you are the only person that has to be pleased with your layout. Just be sure to test track arrangements out so you don't end up with something unworkable.

As for your idea of putting a runaround or even small two or three track yard in the staging area, yes it could be quite prototypical. It could be treated as an interchange with your locomotive kept on the spur, or it could still be considered the main line, but once again, you'd have to make sure you had room to block your cars before entering the spur.

For a prototype example of putting a runaround track on the staging portion and treating it like an interchange, take a look at the interchange end of the Kendallville Terminal Railway: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s...7&t=k&z=18 You have a runaround, and two spurs for car storage here. the locomotive is kept at the end of the line and must shove their cars down to work the Kraft Foods plant. But this might give you some other ideas for your layout plan.