Back to the drawing board

This weekend, the weather was great and I had an opportunity to do some work in the train room. I think I finally figured out a strategy to create the shelving above the layout that will be strong enough to support books, allow me to attach a sky fascia to the front, and provide the mount for lighting all around the layout. I even found some 1" x 4" boards from the old layout lighting valence that I could re-use as the shelf support frame. I started to build the first shelf over the staging yard in the garage. As I moved things around the garage so I could get to the work area, I came to realize something.
This is not going to work.

Twice around point-to-point track plan (v1.5)

I've mentioned a couple times before (here and here), that Bruce has done an exception job creating a trackplan that meets or exceeds all my givens and druthers. I came to some stark realizations this weekend on the negatives on my plan to use both the train room and an area in the garage:

• Tunnels from the garage to the train room will be cold air vents in the winter, since the train room is insulated and the garage is not.
• The garage will be pretty cool, if not down right cold, for the staging yard operator (mole). 
• Engineers will always have to duck under the layout as the bring a train from staging into the train room, and the westbound (coming out of East Staging) will have to hustle to see his engine appear opposite the duck-under. 
• There is no way to operate the staging yard without moving the car out of the garage, and there is no direct path from the staging yard to the train room (have to walk around a lot of stuff!)

So in short, I think the trackplan has everything I wanted, but I think I wanted too much. I am rethinking my givens and druthers list but within new boundaries that I think will allow me to do one of the following:

• U-shaped layout with a yard that provides essentially an out and back, or even a point-to-loop.
• U-shape with a small yard in the middle and make the whole layout an urban depiction of East McKeesport for lots of industrial switching, maybe incorporate an interchange or two.
• O-shaped for continuous run for display but point-to-point for operating.

I am working through these ideas and as I narrow them down, maybe something will grab me. In the meantime, I can still build the shelves above the layout and get the lighting over the layout ... while I figure out what is the layout.