Mockup

One of the advantages of rebuilding instead of starting from scratch is having enough track, buildings and cars to mockup some ideas. Sure, I have to scrap glue off the old bemchwork tops and I am sure the turnouts and tracks will be a little tricky as I reuse them but look at what I mocked up last night.

Looking west, closest track goes to staging, middle is the mainline and the inside track is the yard lead

I realized the most challenging arrangement will be the Irwin yard. How big is enough and can I fit it. I laid out some track last night and think I have a workable plan. This arrangement is close to the Idea Plan yesterday and not too different from Bruce's plan as he has pointed out.
Looking north, the right side of the yard area has, from front to back, an engine track, RIP and MoW tracks and a double-ended cabin car track - some thing that was missing from the old layout.

Engine, RIP, MoW and Cabin car tracks form the right side of the yard

The left side has the 4 track yard. As you can see, the 4th track has space for 7 cars which should be pretty good but I need to confirm the interchange track with the yard, the yard lead and the rest of the layout can support 6-7 car trains with an engine and cabin car. Mostly I expect 4-6 car trains for the traffic flow.

Four track staging yard