Michael,
I appreciate your taking the time to help me with this. I am almost embarrassed to even upload this sketch! When I discovered a few days ago that I might have a reverse loop, I drew this pen and pencil sketch of the whole layout so I could tell where my "lines" crossed. My sketch is too big to provide a copy of the whole thing on one page since my scanner size is limited. However, this is the part that is relevant. I have made some circled numbers to make it easier for me to describe. Each track is depicted with two lines - a blue one and a pencil one.
Starting in area 1 - A train would come out of the storage area (bottom right SE corner) and proceed up that Eastern most track and it would loop around and come back down almost to the place where it started. So I can go any direction, and due to limited space, I put in a double crossover. I pencilled a circle around all 4 ends of the crossover as potential problems, but I think it is the bottom two that are the actual problems.
In area 2 there will be a turntable and I know it creates problems and I am under the impression that at AR-1 will solve that, but I have not studied that yet. One problem at a time is all I can handle! To the left (West of) of the turntable the double track reduces to single track and then North of that it has a turnout to the left and right. The right leg of that takes off and heads back East coming under some track and crossing some track just to the right of the number 3.
In that number 3 area that right leg from area 2 drops down and there is a turnout to run a track over to the Eastern most track of the double track just north of where the double track begins. That turnout has a pencil circle over it because that is the other place where there is a polarity problem.
The rest of the layout is not shown in its entirety, but has no impact on the areas I have scanned. But, basically it swings on around to the West and heads south and ends up coming back into the picture in the bottom right third of the sketch. It has no loops of any kind.
So, the bottom line in my view is a problem at 1, 2, and 3. 2 is down the road a little ( and I may not even include the turntable), so I will save it for the future. So my questions have to do with how to wire, how many, and where to place AR-1s to fix 1 and 3.
This is what happens when you let newbies play with trains! Thanks again for the help. Wish I had a better diagram but I think you can follow it.
Dan