Well, I have one in mind that I've wanted to build for a long time that is behind my grandmothers neighborhood in Bossier City, LA. It's not really a mainline but they send mixed freights threw there sometimes when it's backed up on the other side of town close to Blanchard, LA. the KCS Deramus yard in Shreveport, LA. The line is mainly an industrial delivery line. The place I am shooting for behind the neighborhood in a concrete/asphalt construction plant with a dead end spur that splits into two spurs the dead end's with boulders as wide and almost as tall as a gondola sitting on the track's ends for bumpers. On the main is a wood deck truss bridge and a little further up is a crossing of a 4 lane non divided road with bad traffic congestion. Lot's of restraunts, business' and other thing's in the area. You could jump off the train and walk maybe not even 50 yards to Cici's pizza! I want to model it because it's the first place I ever I got operate a train. Two KCS GP-30's moving 30 gon's loaded with rock. Over time and being down on the line almost everyday I became good friend's with the crew that worked job #6. From there I've gotten to ride on the steps of a set of SW-1500's, uncoupling the cut's and working the switch. For a while I got to stay at the switch on the main with someone with me making sure when I did something I didn't get hurt. After a good 6 month's they cut me loose and I did the switch throwing by myself unsupervised when it was called for. They knew I knew how the whole switching process worked even thought sometimes it was never the same technique until I had a mishap after a repair crew came threw and didn't adjust the switch right actually making it worse after complaints from the crew's that the switch had to much pressure on it when throwing it to the siding. Well, that day I ended up down there as always not knowing the switch point's had been reset and I threw it and it was a lot harder to do being I was smaller than I am now and that throw arm popped back up and over out of it's slot and belted me across the chest almost breaking a couple rib's. It ended up turning a light shade of blue for a couple day's but I was fine so a week later one of the guy's brought me a Norfolk Southern RR ice chest and gave it to me. Along inside was a 6 pack of bottled railroad water (good stuff I still buy to this day) a KCS hat (can only be bought by the personal at the yard) and a full set of KCS safety regulation guides and manuals and the switch list of car's I moved. Very nice guy's. :thumb: I'll cherish those child/teenhood memories for the rest of my days, and this is why I want to model it so bad, but will be hard to do because I want to get as close to it as possible down to the last detail. Hardest part; finding the car's. :curse: Hertzog, RailGon, and KCS 60' gondola's have been hard for me to find. Out of all the looking I've only found one which is KCS #800007 which needed work. I put Kato SR-70 ton roller bearing trucks under it and all the details after the mounting hole's had been stripped and broke. Another place I want to model is in Troy, AL. Here is a link to some picture's from another guy who lives in the area.
http://the-gauge.com/thread9004-switching-in-troy.html
Some of the picture's show a major trucking company and you'll notice a company called KW plastic's which is mainly this railroads main customer but however KW plastic's is owned by a guy named Wiley Sanders who also owns Wiley Sanders Truck Lines who my step dad currently drive's for and who I will be driving for next year. Over the last couple of year's spending my fare share of time on the truck yard down there I've seen the two locomotive's in action. Reason for modeling is because of their association with Wiley Sanders Truck Lines and having family about 50 miles east of Troy, AL. in Dothan, AL. Reasoning for that is a whole other story. One last place I would like to model after and can't be done anytime soon do to the extremely high cost of what it would take to build in HO is the Shriners Hospital in Shreveport, LA. across the way from a double track "super" mainline running North and South along I-49 into Shreveport's major hub of multiple UP and KCS yard's and interchanges. (some used to be Cottenbelt, SP and one Mopac) The modular club I am in set's up and display's our layout at the hospital once a year around June-July for the disabled and mentally/phishically challenged children. The other two place's I mentioned to be modeled will be on my personal layout when I build it but the Hospital modeling will be for the club's layout to display. But like I mentioned before can't be done anytime soon because of the cost to build it would really hurt the pocket book for most of us. Sorry for the book I just wrote lol. I can't help it though, gotta explain thing's to understand about the other's, plus I just like to write.