Southern Pacific Switching Layout

[FCIN]

Justin;

Per Mike's (and my) suggestion; would a revision of the main section of your layout something like this work?     I'm sure I don't have the dimensions correct for your bench work, but I think this would more closely resemble the actual facility and give you more operational potential. This is what the actual "lower dock" looks like and shows where the tank car would spot:     The former main line which has the transload and car storage is not quite as long as per your plan, but you'd also have room to store a car or two on the lower dock track.

I know that everything is compressed and you may not be able to spot as many cars on each of the Inland tracks as you might like, but we always have to do a lot of compression to make things fit our limited modeling space. Since this is the major industry on your plan, which would have to be switched daily, having the two tracks just would provide a lot more switching potential in my opinion than the single track. Of course having to line up your cars on a single track also requires a fair amount of switching, but this arrangement does look just a little more like the prototype.

Just something to think about and I'm sure you can work out the details to fit your bench work much better then my example. Once you get your track (and foam?) you can try out different configurations for this part of your layout and see what works best for you.