Rail yard...newbie here

[Green_Elite_Cab]

GCE, the brown( or red) track is the main. the tracks coming off of the main are a small "lead" if you will, to the industry spurs. Did not want to have to back out onto the main so much and wanted to be able to pull forward off the spurs onto the main in either direction , and I am not sure how I would access those industry spurs without those tracks connecting to the main. If you think its wrong or have an idea on hoe i could do it better, would love to hear it!

Nah, the plan is pretty good, I would tweak it as shown below. I'd remove the long crossover on the middle right, and add a crossover (in orange), on the lower right. Your original idea isn't necessarily wrong, but railroads typically tried to avoid any unnecessary track or turnouts, since they cost money to maintain and require extra attention.

I removed the one redundant crossover, and added another in orange near the bottom right.



In reality, you could also just run your locals with a locomotive on each end. This is fairly common practice on the industrial tracks around here in NJ, and I don't see why things would be done differently in florida. If you are using a DCC system and similar engines, you should be able to run the consist fairly easily.

I have tried to do some research on the area(north florida) to find out main industries in the region. florida typically I have read is alot of limestone, and intermodal, which works for the port/wharf area. Also, tropicana orange juice lol. check out this youtube video, its neat. florida to newjersey in 156 seconds (GE juice train) <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb8mk2HSJUc">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb8mk2HSJUc</a><!-- m --> Rolling stock I have currently are mostly box cars, and come covered hoppers. which i guess serves the farm area well as I want to have a stock yard and some big grain elevators, silos etc. Just have to think of some others I guess, but thats the fun part of it!

I'm thinking some type of forestry/loggin operation would be cool, as we have a lot of planted pine plantations in the area.

What you want to run is very important to the track plan. The trackplan must revolve around what you want to run. The intermodal and Orange Juice trains are probably to large to use them as an industry using the plan as it is now.

A grain elevator is fine, but I don't think there are many modern stock yards served by rail anymore, and even if there are, I don't know of any "modern" stock car offerings.