While I don’t like making mistakes, it’s not so bad if I notice before the impact is large. I’ve been working on the piles of coal to cover up all those nails on the coal dock. I created some nice basic forms with the appropriate angle of repose for coal, and was just about to add the coal when I thought, “hang on, they’re on the wrong side!”
The way I see it, if there is any floor showing (and I don’t want to hide all my hard work), it should be on the side furthest from the track. If I were shovelling coal out of a gondola, I would throw the coal 10 or 12 feet if I could, rather than 16 or more feet. Similarly, if I were filling a tender, I would want to stand just behind the crest of the pile and shovel four or six feet straight or sideways; I’d probably adjust the pile so I could keep it that way.
So imagine my relief when I discovered I’d built my forms on the far side of the dock before gluing them in place! That would have been a difficult error to fix!
Pembroke:87 
I sure like that logic. Reading your observations I wondered how far I could throw a shovel-load of coal. Probably about as far as you suggest, likely not even that far, and ultimately progressively less with each successive pass. It’s neat to think of ways to humanize the models like this—instead of just dumping model coal into a pile thinking a someone puts it there, moves it around.
-Chris
Rene – Been there done that! However if we do nothing, we never learn from our mistakes!