Reviewing My Victorville Layout Track Plans, and Building Layout Section 2

Last time we finished our second visit to the signature scenes in Victorville, so this time I've decided to review what the overall layout track plans look like.  Then we'll look at my progress in putting Section 2 up on legs.  (I was gone for a week, so I only completed one section this time.)

One version of the track plan, which I rejected at the last minute, had just a single level and had an 8-track staging yard along the walls of the staging room (instead of having a helix to a lower deck).  Here's a top view of that plan:

You can see the 8-track staging yard in the staging room at the top of this drawing, where you also see a return loop of several tracks.  Moving to the right out of that room, the double-track mainline curves through the Lower Narrows scene as it follows that inside aisle around a wall of cabinets (the dark gray rectangle).

As the mainline continues to follow that aisle beside the cabinets and toward the red arrow marked as "View 1," some spur tracks branch off into the large cement plant scene there.  At the lower left, the mainline curves around and heads into the Victorville scene near the red arrow marked as "View 2."

Finally, the mainline curves to the left through the Upper Narrows scene near the upper right and heads back to the left, into the big return loop in the staging room.

This layout plan was also put into perspective views by my friend Jim Coady.  The view below shows the cement plant scene as seen from the View 1 arrow, with a curving blue backdrop behind it:
 

 

And here is a view of the Victorville side, looking from the View 2 arrow:

You can see the Victorville wye sticking out behind the man standing there.
 
If we could fly up above the basement at this point, here's what we'd see:

Note the steps down to the daylight basement at the top of this view, and the staging room at the upper right.  Victorville and its wye are right in front of us, with the blue backdrop separating us from the cement plant on the far side.

Here's one more view from up above, this time looking at the cement plant side of the layout:

You can see the staging room with its return loop and its yard at the left, and the stairway to the basement at the lower center.  As you enter the basement, you will first encounter the large cement plant scene.  Note the two posts around the railroad's entrance to the cement plant -- they are holding up the house.

This would have been a good-size layout to build, but I was greedy and wanted even more staging tracks, so I added in a lower deck full of staging yards, and a large helix in the staging room to connect the decks and to include even more staging space. 

This is what the current layout plan looks like (showing only the upper deck tracks and the helix):

 

Everything is the same here, except for the helix (at the top) replacing the 8-track staging yard of the previous plan.  I'm still drawing the details of the lower deck staging yards, so I have no view of that to show you yet.

Now let's look at my progress in putting Section 2 up on legs this past week, after being gone the previous week.  I attached seven legs to the frame, as seen here:

It's not obvious, but two of the 2x2 legs are located in the middle of the section, so that they will be out of the way of the staging yards that have to pass through that area.  Note that Section 3 in the distance does not line up exactly with Section 2, so some of the sections will have to be moved by an inch or so to connect them all together properly.

Here now is Section 2 after its plywood top got five edge notches and two center holes cut into it, so it could be placed over the seven legs, as seen from the middle of the layout:

Note the two legs that come through the middle of the section.  Next week Section 1 will fill that empty space in the distance.

Here's one last view of Section 2, looking in the other direction:

The future Section 1 is on the floor in the foreground.  You can now see the entire loop that the layout makes around the main room in the basement.

During my travels I met with Jim Coady, who showed me the Mojave Northern rock car that he had 3D printed himself, and he gave me this poster he made as a souvenir of our rock car project:

I look forward to completing the lower deck benchwork by next time!