Track plan help?

[Russ Bellinis]

I am not even sure that I am posting this in the right place...
Here is the track plan that I am working on so far...

The red lines indicate a scenic divider (i.e. backdrop) On the top is the staging area. On the left side you can see the turntable sitting, all alone, that is where my yard will be. Obviously more needs to be done to make this a workable plan. I need to add some crossovers, a yard, ad infinitum.
If the resident planning gurus could take a peak at this and give me their thoughts, it would be most appreciated.
Crud, the dimensions don't show on the picture. The grid is in 3" increments.

Thanks,
Matt

Here is a slightly more useful pic

I just used the quote from your first post to get the picture of your room with dimensions. I got a figure of 17 feet on the left side of the drawing and 6 feet across the bottom of the drawing. Adding 17 and 6 I get 23 feet which multiplied by 12 to get inches gives me 276 inches. If you start a 3% double tracked down grade just before or just after the curve in the lower right corner of the layout (if you are doing a duck under, lift out, or swing bridge there, start the down grade just past the duck under, etc.)you will be at 8-10 inches below grade by the time the grade gets to the turntable in the upper left corner. If you install some gentle "S" bends in the 17 foot long side you could probably get it to 12 inches below grade when you get under the turntable. You could then locate your staging yard under the yard at the top of the layout. If you have the November 2008 issue of Model Railroader, there is an article on making an inexpensive manual staging yard turntable. If you make one long enough to hold a complete locomotive consist, you could uncouple your locomotives from the train after it was in the staging yard, run them onto the turntable, reverse them and hook up to the other end of a train to leave. If you are running diesel era, just do a run around track. If you want to be able to come out of staging in either direction, put a switch back in the center of the 17 foot side. to reverse direction coming onto the layout, you would back the train out of staging past the switch back and then throw the switch and climb out of staging to rejoin the mainline somewhere along the diagonal straight section on the lower right side of the layout. They call such a design a "no-lix" since it essentially turns the entire layout into a huge helix. My local hobby shop used to have a demonstration layout in the front of the store. Because of the restricted size of the layout, they used a 4.5% grade up and down to staging. They had to put an extra engine on the train to get up the grade, and they did tend to buck and surge a bit going down, but it was a workable solution. 4%-4.5% would put the staging yard about 14-15 inches below the yard on the top end of the layout. Since you are doing a thread on building a Bowser Mikado, I presume you are running steam. From what I've heard those Bowser steam engines are very heavy and really pull. You could make your no-lix a "helper district" and put a stub siding that would allow the helper to cut off at the top of the grade and then drift back down to staging after the train passed by. If you opt for the turn table I mentioned earlier, you could locate it off to the side under the peninsula at the top of the layout drawing. It wouldn't need to any longer than your longest steam engine & tender. If you are double heading steam up the grade, just turn each locomotive separately. One more thing, you want access to your staging yard from the operators pit on the inside, so run your entrance and exit tracks to and from the no-lix on the outside of the staging yard. Leave an access window on the outside of the layout at the top in case you need to re-rail something without reaching over a staging yard full of trains.