Thanks for the feedback!
During the jam, it was definitely a deliberate design choice to make the track pretty circuitous. It allowed the player to navigate more of the space and lengthened the time it took to circuit the entire track to heighten the consequences of player's movement decisions.
The idea of rail levers to change your track routing is a really neat idea and totally on theme. Wondering how it might work at the breakneck speeds the train can end up going...