Cottondale Junction

Not a lot of progress since the last post, but I do finally have a piece of the middle level in place:

Finally I can tell how much room there really is between the lower and middle levels, and I'm pretty pleased with it. You can see back to all the tracks, and there's plenty of room to reach in and fiddle with cars or flip switches.

This portion of the middle level will be Cottondale, where the L&N main has a junction with the Atlanta & St. Andrews Bay. In reality the junction grade crossing will be where the layout main line crosses itself. Now you can see how the main gets from Chattahoochee to Cottondale--it runs along the front of the lower level and reaches the helix to the right, works its way around the first two levels of the helix, and appears at Cottondale on the middle level at the back right. From there it proceeds around the middle level to Milton before proceeding on up to Pensacola (on the other side of the layout). Tallahassee will be along the back in this scene, a couple of inches above the middle level. The mainline from Tallahassee will wind around the top level of the helix to reach the junction from the front right (the top level of the helix is not yet in place).

Next weekend I plan to have more time to work on the layout, so maybe I can get the rest of the middle level in place at least.