Talk to me about staging
#23
I've been thinking about Delta Lines recently. There was no staging there, except where a particular car happened to be at any given time out on the road OR in the yards at either Chappelle or Donaldson, the terminus points of the railway. Not sure if the middle yard served any such staging function...I think it was a division point, rather. The car routing system served the staging function.

G&D same thing. Great Divide and perhaps Andrews had staging functions, but these were strictly visible and/or imaginative. I won't say imaginary as the trains on the tracks really did exist, but the imagination was required in order to make a leap that allowed for these cars to be shifted off layout somewhere and return, either by physically removing and replacing them between sessions (like the car ferry Annabelle) or just imagining that they had been out and returned, to be classified and shipped somewhere on the layout.

I have a staging plan as well for my timesaver - just a stretch of track 'off layout' where an engine and the few cars on its switchlist can run after the job is done, and from whence the engine and it's cars enter the scene. I am debating still as to whether or not this section will be scenicked, and if so, how?

If you are willing to suspend reality and tell yourself not to look while you change out cars in the interchange yard or on an interchange track, it can save you some time and space. Yes, running a train behind a scenic divider can add to the play value of operations, but at some point you or someone else must physically get those cars and swap them out with others (or turn over their waybills from loaded to empty, routing them back onto the layout). Leaving this location as visible trackage in an already planned yard can repurpose that area that would've been used for staging tracks to an additional industry or something scenic. Plus, you don't need to come up with any tricks to hide any tracks under or behind scenery or structures.

Galen
I may not be a rivet counter, but I sure do like rivets!
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