[pippin88]

I wanted to verify my axis labels so I'm not causing confusion. On my 24"x36" machine in the pics above, the machine will only have access from the front 36" side which is facing the spindle. I'm thinking the 2 shorter rails on top of the torsion box would be Y and the rails along the gantry beam would be the X axis. Is that correct?

Yes.

Standing in front of the machine, facing it as you will use it:
X is left to right
Y is front to back
Z is down to up vertically

This is based on the convention of drawing and graphs, where X is the horizontal axis, Y is perpendicular to X and Z is the third dimension, perpendicular to both.

My machine is setup with X across the gantry.