Golden Eagle

As someone "returning to model railways" for the first time in 25y, I would be grateful for the thoughts of those with far greater experience and knowledge regarding this possible plan for a MPD. Setting is roughly north-east Scotland, at the peak of the the LNER (ie I've got to justify stabling a trio of A4s!) accepting that I'm using a ramp for coaling (similar to St Margaret's in Edinburgh, I think) rather than a "cenotaph" (because I prefer the look...if I've picked up the terminology correctly from a month of lurking, "Rule 1 applies"?). As well as the movements of locomotives around the MPD for ash dropping, coaling, turning, watering, sanding and time "On The Shed", I hope to use a yard pilot 0-6-0 to move coal wagons between coal stage and adjacent siding. ("Steady state" being six wagons at the top of the ramp, six in the siding) with the potential to for an O4 to deliver rakes of "full" wagons and remove the empties. Main constraint is that the baseboards cannot be deeper than 64cm for the first 70cm at the left-hand end (ie to roughly the mid-point of the Coaling Stage), thus I have a whole 2cm of additional depth to play with. I therefore took the gist of the "linear" MPD at Norwood Junction (courtesy of a suggestion in another MPD-related thread), rotated it through 90 degrees, "mirroring" it to avoid everything being hidden behind the coaling ramp and stage...and transplanted it to Scotland. If necessary, there is space available to the right, where I anticipate that the MPD will feed into a "main line" layout in due course. Specific questions (in addition to any general observations which will be most welcome): 1) How were points actually operated in a MPD? Some layouts seem to include a signal box (though this may be more to do with adjacent main line operations), or would crews operate manual point levers at each turnout? Would there be any signalling other than a "Stop" ("Home"?) signal at the exit to the MPD? Anything around the various tracks? 2) I have put trap points at the bottom of the coal ramp and on the exit road. Should there be any others? 3) Have I missed anything which ought to be present? 4) Are there any obvious showstoppers? Many thanks for your thoughts! Iain

Going through a similar design process myself at the moment. One thing that leaps out at me - how do you move the coal wagons from the storage sidings to the coaling stage? If the shunting locomotive need to push the full wagons up the ramp from the left, how will it get round to the other end of the rake to shunt them into/out of the storage sidings?

I've made a figure-of-eight using R1 curves which a 0-4-0 pug and a 1980s diesel coped with without difficulty. My other locos can't cope with the R1 curve, but I've had Hornby stock A4s pull six carriages up an R2 curve at whatever-the-minimum-sleeper spacing is.

Having (completely by chance) found the RMWeb Server Updates FB page after two weeks of being unable to register here, I can confirm that they had me sorted out within 24h. Many thanks!