Yea, a trailing design would necessitate that the engines be slightly angled away so the payload wouldn’t be in the firing line, but I’ve heard arguments that it would be easier to make due to being tensile rather than rigid in nature and so having better resistance to g force. I’ve also heard the argument that you could just extend the tether to save mass on shielding by just increasing the distance between the modules and the engines

Also, wouldn’t the effectiveness of a solar sail decrease as you get further away from a star?