Tinkering with this and that

Been playing with this and that on the layout. Tinkering with the track plan a little as well as messing with ideas for the lower staging yard, that would be connected via car barges moved by hand from one level to the other. I realised after a half hour of tinkering that the staging yard could be a stub yard since the motive power could pull the cars off the barge, and just shove them onto storgaed tracks and switch them there. (I do plan to do some behind the scenes switching to organize trains in the staging yard). The engine never needs to run around the trains and can work a stub yard just fine. This increased my car capacity by several cars.

I've also been looking at buildings for the layout. I'm trying to get an idea if I can get structures that will work with the track plan I've set up. And so far so good.   I can see that buildings will be another significant expense for the project, and they'll fall even further down the line of things to do. I really am just trying to get an idea if it will work around normal model structures or if I need to move tracks around.

I'm still playing with names and such too. I'm really getting to like the Parks Harbor Industrial moniker. PHI is the greek character often used to represent the golden ratio  among other things. Nerdy and catchy? I'm all about that.  I'm leaning toward using PHIX as the reporting marks, mostly cues PHIR just doesn't seem as cool some how. Though as a "real" railroad, they don't really need the X on their mark. It might still be PHRR too.

I've also noodled with cab lettering:

That is the Greek Phi at the bottom, and it would make a nice and nerdy short hand for the railroad as well. We all need to have our in jokes.