The question of what the yard will look like has been answered!

Well with some snow on the ground finally, so I spent the evening here in the house coming up with different ways of making a yard.  This evening I also cleaned and took stock of all my usable track:

• 4ft diameter curves- 9, one permanently attached to a switch.
• 1 foot straight sections- 4
• 2 foot straight sections- 2
• 3 foot straight sections- 3
• LH R1 switches, 3 one with a curve piece permanently attached.
• RH R1 switches, 2

This comes out to approximately 9ft of curved track, 17 feet of straight track, and 5 switches.

So with that in mind, I began to design the yard which will serve as the hub of the railroad.

Things I wanted in the yard were:

1. A freight house.  The freight house is an old bird house, but with some fixing up, it will work great. 
2. A place to get water and coal.  I have a water tower, but now I am in the quest of finding a suitable container for fake coal.  I won't need a tower, but an old hopper of some kind would work great.
3. A mill, or at least some place to store logs.  This railroad doesn't use water to haul the logs to the mill since the terrain is easier for trains than some places.  The trouble with hauling logs via water is that they get hung up in all sorts of places, so a railroad might actually be cheaper.
4. A platform of some sort for passengers.  With one passenger car, and at most two more coming, I don't need anything fancy, but a simple 2X4 painted well might serve the railroad's "passengers" good enough.

So with those thoughts in mind, I set out to design a simple yard, and here is what I got:

 Cat for size reference.

 Three switches provide most of the track age I need.  The spur in the lower middle of the photo will lead to the mill.  The tow track pieces running parallel in the middle of the photo will hold the freight depot, platform, and water tower.  The only thing I might change about this is I may add a spur to load/ unload cars as well as put them on and take them off the layout.

As you can see, the brass after being cleaned, polished, and fixed is all shiny.  The ties for the most part are okay, with only a few joints missing.

Based on what I have now, I only need at a minimum of six-eight more curves and 9-11 feet of straight track.