No matter what your layout design, whether shelf, 4 x 8, around the room, basement, or club layout, whether freelance or prototype, it can be represented by a flow of goods and services like this:

Naturally if your layout runs north and south you would rotate and re-label, but for the purpose here, we will stick to the example. The California Western Railroad is bordered to the west by the ocean so it, and branch lines, might have a flow of goods services that look like this:

Obviously, we can't model the entire railroading world so we choose some small representation of part of it. What we can do is model the rest of the world in the form of staging. Ideally the flow of goods on our layout would look like this:

Simply put staging represents the rest of the world. It uses the metphor of a play where trains go off stage (to staging.)

Now lets go even smaller and look at a single industry on your layout. Suppose you have a brewery. To run a brewery you will need grain, hops, glass, kegs, yeast, preservatives, etc. Obviously if you could model this you would have a lot of railroad action in this one industry.

In a single day, you might:

drop off hops from the west
pick up empties that yesterday held bottles
pick-up beer heading east

drop off empty kegs arriving from the east
pick-up beer heading west.

So our model of our brewery, in terms of goods and services, might look like this:

But most of us don't room for a glass factory, grain elevator, aluminum plant, etc. And if we did, each of them would have as complicated a materials list as our brewery. We simply cannot model a closed industrial community. We need a flow of goods to the rest of the world–staging.

Even a small layout, with three industries, if it has staging, can have a lot of action if it has staging. A 4x8 layout with a scenic divide, for instance, can work for hours, if it has an industrial scene on one side and staging on the other.

You can add levels of complexity if you model an interchange or a classification yard. Through freights from staging drop off cars to the yard to be classified. It picks up cars from set out by the switcher and continues on it's way to staging. As there becomes enough outgoing cars to warrant a way freight, you take the train and drop off and pick up cars at your industries. You drop the cars back off at the yard where they are built up for the through freights.

What you can do with you layout, in terms of realism and prototypical operations is increased by orders of magnitude–if you have staging.

The more staging you have, the more complex your operations. But just one staging track, can make a world of difference. The British, who typically have less room for layouts than Americans, have this single track staging down to a science. They call it a "fiddle track" because they physically fiddle with the trains, rearranging, adding and subtracting cars, to get the train ready for its next trip through the layout.

For more information on staging see: The Layout Design Special Intrest Group's The Why, What and How of Staging.

Examples

Single Ended Staging

It doesn't matter if your staging is single ended or double ended. What matters is how you use your staging. This stub-ended staging is at the right in the closet. Notice that a train exting staging can either travel clockwise or counter-clockwise. Click to enlarge.

Track Plan by Grampa Coyote

Single Track Staging

The following plan, John Armstrong's Pennsylvania and Potomac from Linn Westcott's 101 Track Plans is an example of how a single track on a layout can be used as staging. Byron Henderson outlines a train in staging in green. Notice that even though it is a single track, it still fills the function of all points east and all points west.

For a detailed description of how this layout can be operated using a single track for staging see Byron Henderson's Starting Ops on a 4X8

Loop Staging

This is an example of adding staging below the main layout. It is a very inventive use of the space under his layout. Had he attemped to make his staging double ended, he would not have had enough track to create comfortable vertical space above the staging tracks.

Track Plan by Wickman. Click to Enlarge (very large)

And here is the lower staging level.

Loop Staging

The following example shows staging used as both ends of a main line/branch line interchange yard. The train comes from staging and either runs through without stopping, drops passengers and/or passenger cars, or drops freight. The main focus of the layout is the branch line. Cars left by the mainline trains are delivered throughout the branch line.

Track Plan by Phillip Carrell Click to enlarge

Lower Level staging