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"Can you imagine the display if one of these computer whiz-kids decided to integrate a program with a freight yard set-up? All automatic switching, coupling etc?"

It's all been done. If you have the money you can automate everything. And it is not the hokey automation from the 1950s, but very sophisticated and complex automation of signals and switches that mimics the way real trains are operated. Many train layouts are now run by something called digital command control which is an encoded computer chip using multiplexed ac signals and not your basic dc transformer. The hobby has become very technologically sophisticated in the last 5 years, but also very expensive. A single locomotive engine with digital command control and on-board sound encoders can run from $200 up to several hundred dollars. Hand built brass engines will run into the thousands.

It was done as far back as 1941.

Minton Cronkhite was commissioned by the Santa Fe Railroad to construct an automated O-scale railroad for the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

It took up about 3000 square feet and was controlled by two racks full of relays. I think the operator could select from two different "programs."

The whole thing was torn apart by Museum management in 1993 and then reassembled after public outcry. It was finally disassembled for good in 2002 and replaced by a computer controlled HO layout.