Hitting mental wall on layout design for Bristol line II

Hey there:
  I've been noodling sporadically in XTrkCad to start designing a new trackplan for the designated layout room. The space is a long, narrow, high-ceilinged basement room that shares digs with a furnace, water heater and heat pump.
 The much-cursed heat pump (a late addition to the new place in order to provide HVAC to living space we added) wasn't factored into my original scheme. The @!#$%^&  pump eats several feet of floor space about where I'd envisioned a helix or turnback loop.
Long story short, this situation has caused me to draw a blank on how to wind track past it and on to a helix that would connect two levels of benchwork. Here's the conundrum:
A) If I moved benchwork off of the slab wall and out in front of the HVAC footprint, I then create a dead-end aisle at the corner, which precludes following a train around the turnback without using a duck-under, which I'm trying to avoid.
B) I could, I think, snake a single track on a shelf not much wider than the ties behind the HVAC area, but it would lead to a pretty tight helix of about 30" radius, 32" max, with the track hard by the walls, in order to maintain a minimally workable aisle width of 30", maybe a tad less.

So, I'm seeking thoughts from the aggregated track planners of the world, or the Layout Design SIG, whichever comes first. Suggestions, solutions cheerfully welcomed and appreciated.

Thanks,
AJ

Below is a large .BMP file of the space. (Click on the mini-map below to open a larger view.) The rectangles and circle at upper right is the HVAC/hot water heater farm.
I've also included further below a photo of part of that corner before the head pump was added to the right of the water heater. The heat pump leaves me about 66 inches of space between it and the far wall in the photo.
Have at it, folks!

Basement Lair 1.0 (click to enlarge)

Basement upper right corner  (view before heat pump added to far right)

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ajack1522@gmail.com

The reason why we're here -- more to come!

An N&W J-class blasts east out of Bristol, Va., in the 1950's -- photo by E.W. King Jr.

The Big Picture

This page is intended to spell out some of the thinking behind the HO Scale model railroad I'm planning. This will be my second real pike since my teen-age years in the '70s. I've worked on a few club layouts since then and attended countless layout tours, viewing many state-of-the art layouts.

The layout will represent part of the Norfolk & Western Railway's Bristol line, which runs from Walton, Va., just east of Radford, Va., to Bristol, Tenn.-Va. The Bristol depot sits literally about 100 or so feet from the Virginia-Tennessee border. The Bristol line also includes the famous Abingdon (not Abington, BTW) branch of "Virginia Creeper" fame. Two other less-famous branches were also on the line, The Saltville Branch and the North Carolina Branch.

Operational Niceties

I model the N&W in the late-steam era, generally 1956-57. This meant that N&W's big steam still ruled for the most part. The famed J-class 4-8-4's still moved the varnish, with help from the occasional K2a streamlined 4-8-2. Through freights were moved by Y6-class 2-8-8-2 Mallets. Given the tight curves and rolling profile of this single-track line, the big articulateds weren't overkill. Local freights were hauled by K1-class 4-8-2's and the famous Abingdon Branch mixeds numbers 202/201 were pulled by M-class 4-8-0's.

A true bridge line, all of the Bristol line passenger trains save the local were through trains off the Southern Railway, handled by the N&W between Bristol and Monroe, Va., near Lynchburg. The Southern's Knoxville Division time freights handled traffic west of Bristol that was brought into town from the east by N&W. The SRR's Appalachia Division also connected with the Bristol line. Locomotives from both SRR and N&W were serviced at the N&W engine terminal about a mile east of Bristol Union Depot.

Comment Line

ajack1522@gmail.com