I visited a friend's model railroad last weekend. It was quite impressive and he was quick to show me a rebuilt section of the layout. Because of the tight space available, the track plan insisted that a switch off the mainline be used where the straight section went to a dead-end spur. The curved section of this switch was the mainline on this layout.

I would think that it would be uncommon practice to have a switch set up this way on a railroad, where the more used section of rail is the "diverging route" off the switch. In fact, I cannot recall any switch on a mainline set up this way, but sure that it exists somewhere. "There is a prototype for everything".

Can anyone provide a specific mainline switch set up this way? How about on a class1 railroad?

Thanks in advance.
almo