Ron, thanks for the picture advice. I'll remember that for the future pics as my layout starts to get built.
There is a lot that I don't know, so thank you for the warnings and advise about what to do and not to do. I cannot walk around this layout. It is ~ 4" from the north, east & south walls. I am not sure the gopher holes are a good idea given the size, Triplex. I put them in because one of the local train shop guys said, "Hey, you're going to need some access holes here, here and here in order to reach these areas" when I showed this to them the first time.
So what I'd like is for some help with getting a better design for this layout that won't end up being a nightmare to build and maintain. I have the whole room you see to work with. I cannot move the top left corner as it is a wall. The door doesn't need any space to open since I can easily remove the door and leave the doorway.
That being said, I am not opposed to completely starting over with the layout in ordet to preserve my sanity in the future. I can rework it, move things around, or scrap it completely. Until i'm satisfied with it and have general agreement from folks here that it's doable and reasonable, I won't buy any of the framework yet
Les, yes, you are right about there being some reversing areas. From what I've read it shouldn't be too big of a problem if I use auto reversing units? I don't mind learning as I go with this and I expect a lot of learning! You would not be the first to suggest i start smaller/easier and work my way up to something this complex. However, in all my hobbies I'm the "jump in feet first and go from there" type of guy. It's no knock on the small steps approach, but if I'm going to do this and be happy with this it will have to be full sized, hairy, all-in-one kind of thing. I'm pretty sure I can learn fast enough from my mistakes (since I don't mind making them) to not burn out. If it turns out badly, I'm no hero and I'll admit I bit off more than I could chew and start smaller at that point. But for now, I'm going to dream big and try my best to get it done

You can blame Nazgul for this, btw

He's totally an inspiration. And, I'm hoping to get Galen or anyone else to take a peek and offer some alternate ideas.
Loren, I used a program called RailModeller. The demo version was free and I couldn't find anything else like that for my Mac

Also, yes, that is a turntable (Walthers).
I'll give you all a bit of history (short though it may be) about how this all got started.... I blame my girlfriend for taking me to a local hobby store about 6 months ago. I walked over to the model train area and started looking around....I left the store with a little 2-6-0 DC steamer (it was on sale, so why not?) and a starter pack of Bachmann EZ track. It took me exactly 6 hours to end up right back at the store buying more track...and more and more and more. I had filled up the entire floor space with this stuff and was not satisfied. I pulled the whole thing apart each night and set up a new track layout each night for two weeks. That was a hell of a lot of fun! But still, it wasn't enough. I remember deciding that I wanted to have more than one locomotive running on the rails so that's when I found this local train specific shop and everything went downhill from there. I scrapped all of the EZ track (anyone in the market for a room full???) the Bachmann controller (I bought a Digitrax Zephyr) and started planning on the fly in the store. I was enthralled by the DCC + sound locos so I bought one (okay, two) of them, a basket full of Code 83 track + switches and headed home. That evening the plotting became much more serious as I certainly did NOT want to be putting this lovely track on the carpet! I went to the home depot, bought a pile of 3/4" plywood and ordered WAY too much of the blue polystyrene(thinking ahead to multiple levels of landscape) and then started building up tables for the decks....
THEN I started worrying about the track layout. Can you see a pattern here? I can't wait. I just literally can't wait to get going. So I've got this layout plan, two tables with a big oval and some turnouts and all 6 (yes, 6 by now with 3 more on the way) locos all running around on it while I plan for the future. The existing stuff is scrap unless I can incorporate it in the permanent design and that doesn't bother me at all.
What I'd ultimately like, if it's feasible, is to keep the coaling and gravel areas(since I already bought the buildings) and have the dock for a intermodal facility. Everything else is negotiable. Well, except for wanting to have at least one (preferably two) constantly running loops while I'm messing with the switching and other fiddly-bits.
Sorry for the long windedness of this, but I'm just completely hyped up about the possibilities! I eagerly look forward to any and all input!
Thanks a million!