More Detail on Staging Concept

So I wanted to throw up a little bit more on what my line of thinking was when I wrote the post this morning. Here's how I envision the staging/transition between decks working:

as you can see, staging will run against the back of the level all the way around. In the configuration I have above, I can get 4, 200"+ tracks, good enough to slot 8 trains, leaving the 5th one free for loop running. In the upper right, just after the yard throat would begin the 4" climb up. With the length of run, the grade there will be about 1.6%. On the peninsula, I can average about the same, but because some areas will hold a yard/switching functions, the grades will top out at 2.0% in some places. This will get the line along the left wall at 4" where the yard complex will begin. The line will be level the rest of the way around the walls to the helix.

One good thing is that when I built the benchwork for most of the layout, I had 15" depths on the bottom level around the walls. This will now allow me to basically do 12" scenes with some space behind to run these ramps or provide some reach in and/or peaking space if I desire.