I’m working on the passenger station part of my layout and have run into something of a dilemma. This section is setup with a four tracks for passenger trains and a mainline the goes into a reversing loop around the whole complex. The mainline has an REA off of it along with a car washing track and to service these I need to fit in a runaround. However, the only place where there is a stretch of straight track long enough for this is to put a runaround off of one of the outside passenger station tracks. The runaround would begin at about the point where the platform begins. Since I will not usually have four passenger trains parked in the station, I can keep this track free to access the runaround. My question is whether this would look absurd. I’m trying to be reasonably realistic on the layout and don’t want to introduce something that is ridiculous. What do you think?
Passenger stations often had locomotive “escape” tracks so it could pull the train in forward, leave the train at the station and get around the train back to the roundhouse. I would think you could “disguise” your runaround track as an escape of these and it would not look ridiculous at all.
Why do you need to runaround?
From what I’ve seen it would be far more usual for the passenger consists to be worked back out (of what I take to be blind platform spurs) (with or without a switcher on the outer end for part of the trip) and then go round the reversing loop you already have. I suspect that many modellers would envy your reversing loop.
Have fun