2012 - A double deck design

After finishing that first layout drawing it occurred to me that I would really rather have the layout not just go around and through a single staging yard.  What I really wanted was to have a staging yard on each end and a way to for a train to turn around at each end.  I wanted it to have a sense of actually going somewhere.  The other problem with this design was that is was completely flat as both ends had to meet at the staging yard.  The prototype does have a bit of a grade with the east end being higher than the west.

Using the fact that the prototype has a grade I came up with the idea of placing a two stacked helix's at the end of the peninsula connecting the ends of the layout to staging yards on each side of the peninsula.   The west end being lower would helix down to a staging yard that was below the east end.  The higher east end would helix up to another staging yard above the west end.  I never did finish an actual layout drawing of this version but did have a track schematic shown below.

Just as well I didn't spend the time on that drawing because Version 2 would not be even close to the final plan.