First Florida Layout Update for January 2019

Greetings followers of the Atlantic Pacific Railroad and my blog site!

I've been down in South Florida since Mid-December having a great time, spending it the CFO Wife and my side of the family. In between all of that, I've had time to work on building the layout. Being retired doesn't hurt the cause, does it? I don't think so....

My last post on the progress showed the frames in place on both upper and lower levels. Since that time, I've added the plywood for the upper level and secured it in place. 

The difficult part was getting the helix connected to the lower level. After several attempts with adjusting the plywood grade, we have a connection!

Next was to come up with a tentative track plan, which I have done. Here's the lower level. 

And the Upper level.....

I've already worked on tweaking the track plan. The intermodal yard is now being moved as the space needed to the track next to the main tracks are too close for comfort, so I moved the tracks to the upper level east wall (right side) towards the front of the benchwork. Will relocate that industry later as I progress with installing more track. 

Cork roadbed has been laid on one section that will have the track leading to & from the helix. It's the main track that will be primarily for the passenger train as it has good size radius on it. Once I paint the cork, I can start to lay some track and continue working on installing more cork to get the lower level west wall connected to the north wall (middle section) and then on to the east wall (right side).

This was taken last night prior to the intermodal tracks being removed. 

This should you a better feel of what I'm trying to do. Trains need to be able to go from either side of the railroad while on the lower level. Same theory applies to the upper level. Since I had to change the track leading to the intermodal, it has given me some more space in the front (middle) of the layout to make some industry access easier to both sides of this level.

More to follow....