Ugh...the closeness between the rear tracks and the inner turn is causing me fits, adjusting the radius to create more space, but losing the straight sections to cut down the s-curve, etc.
SO, this plan is now on hold in a stack of others while I contemplate yet another scenario.
My wife was helpful, (I guess...we'll see if the idea has use or not) with a good idea to put a small staging yard above my desk on the wall opposite the timesaver, accessed by a removable section in front of the breaker box. It'd only be there during operating sessions so as to maintain easy access to the box.
Now the tracks on this yard would be MAX 5'8", assuming a turnout is placed before the breaker box and two tracks cross on the removable section, a badlands on which no trains would be able to stay more than the time it takes to pass by. The remaining tracks and switch ladder would all be less than 5 feet. If I lay the turnouts with close frog-to-point distance then I could squeeze 4, maybe 5 tracks with decent length.
NOW the possibility of a point to point from this little yard, through some scenes, ending at ML, could work because the distance traveled at a good slow speed could take some time to make it from one end to the other, especially with intermediate stops in between.
And this morning's inspiration (well, late last night it came to me but I was already in bed and didn't feel like jumping up to sketch it down...I have done that before) was to modify the first G&D with Gorre becoming Murdock's Landing and timesaver access, and Daphetid becoming the line off to the staging yard above the desk.
Essentially, John's plan gets stretched and pulled taller and thinner with the same basic twice-around schematic and branch up to Daphetid, and, like John, I'd move the turntable/roundhouse outside the loops to become the town of Murdock's Landing.
Perhaps later tonight I'll get a sketch up. We'll see. I'm also working on something cool for Illus and eventualy Big Jim (if he hasn't built something yet...just kidding Jim).
Galen