Logging Locos, Logging Track Plan, Logging Mill, Mainline Pick-up

[railandsail]

...interesting posting from another forum (construction spur)

I agree with the previous assessment that you are trying to pack up way too much into the available space. 

There are a large number of prototype logging railroads out there that ran with one set of log flats, the locomotive would push the empty cars out to where loggers had piled logs along the side of a spur, load the logs, then return to the mill.  Many of these operations used slide back loaders that would travel out and back on the log flat, the following link should take you to a picture of such a loader on a Potlatch operation in Idaho.
http://camasprairierails.com/John_Hender...loader.jpg

Of course, this kind of operation doesn't work well unless you employ a "hand of god" method to load the logs onto the flats at the landing. 

Your involved distances are short enough that perhaps your best scenario would be to have the log loads at the end of a spur on the peninsula, run a lite engine out to get the loads, pull them back to the mill, then shove the empties out to the spur.  If you have enough room you might be able to install a siding or a spur somewhere on the line that would simplify things, you'd end up shoving the empties out from the mill, then use a siding or spur on the line to facilitate swapping the loads and empties, then pull the loads back to the mill.  But you might not have enough room to do this. 

Here are two McCloud River shots, one of a steam locomotive shoving empty log flats up a spur and the second is a McGiffert loader ready to load empty cars on the end of a spur.  If you adopt this kind of operation then the solution would be to just swap the empty and loaded cars back to their starting point between operating sessions.  

 


Lastly, here's an idea for you that might add some operational and visual interest.  If you go back to my post earlier in this thread I discuss the common practice of building sequential spurs into successive stands of trees over the course of a logging operation.  You could easily model such an operation by having the active logging operation on one side of the peninsula and a log spur construction scene on the other side.  You could have the logging locomotive between log runs shove carloads of ties and rails out to a crew in the woods, with some other people and equipment "grading" the spur towards the end of the peninsula.