Kevin.......congrats and best wishes. Looking forward to seeing your progress!
A few questions and comments.
1. I love Dennis Brenna's book. Great tips and info there.
2. What is the height of your table? It probably needs to be a little higher than 42" in order have adequate room for you to work on the subway......My table height was 42" and my subway was about 28".
It was OK when I built my layout (I was 57-58). It was awful to take it down 10 years later (67-almost 68).
This is no fun....
3. Those switches in the back.....you may want to rethink those. Can you move then to the sides and make them more accessible? I think there must be a model railroading law that says the number of derailments is directly proportional to the difficulty in reaching the area df the derailment......
I am looking forward to seeing your progress....I am a fellow urban modeler and am always looking for new ideas.
Have fun!
Peter