Three down and... a bunch more to go.

Progress continues on the west end staging yard. I decided to hand-lay the turnouts in the yard primarily because I enjoy this activity and I have found them to be extremely reliable. In the photo below you can see that the ties are in place for the twelve turnouts and three  are complete. 

Once the two remaining turnouts on the ladder on the right hand side of the picture are finished, I'll lay the track to the end of the staging yard. This will give me three tracks total for now. I only have three tracks in the east staging yard that are usable, so this should suffice until some turnouts are replaced  there. It's also become apparent that I'm going to need more motive power and freight cars in order to effectively utilize both ends of staging. Right now, the power off two westbound movements that terminate at Hollister Yard is used for eastbound movements that originate there later in the session. If this power moves off the layout into staging, new power will be needed to replace it.

There seems to be a natural flow about this that occurred completely by accident. As new units and freight cars are added to the layout, new trains can be added. Once the existing staging tracks begin to get filled, new ones can be added, and so forth and so on. Now if I can just get John Miller to part with a few more of his freight cars...