If you had 4500sqft and a blank check...

[Ed Kapuscinski]

After I asked, I've been thinking about what I'd do myself.

I'm leaning toward Conrail in Philly in 85.

I'd want to do Abrams Yard east into the City (including Belmont, ZOO, the High Line and South Philly), then from the south I'd start at Citi Steel at the Delaware Line, do the Chester Secondary along with the NEC into center city, and then to the Northeast I'd want to include Frankford Junction and the branch lines around it, Holmesburg, Bristol, and all the way to Morrisville and the steel mill.

Of course, it'd need a bunch of staging to feed it in all directions, and to keep the AMTRAK lines busy.

I'd probably outsource the benchwork and the repetitive stuff (oh, AND the catenary...).

I'd want to set it up to either operate or just continuously run, for fun while out of Rule G compliance.

[Denver Road Doug]

Oooh, good one!  Although the blank check takes *some* of the fun out of it...

"The Denver Road" circa "Modern" ... 1998 +/- 5 years.

Basically, the BNSF lines that made up the C&S and FW&D plus some ATSF features thrown in, as follows:
1. Houston - Basically the Smithers Lake coal plant and relevant BNSF lines.  Highly compressed mostly focusing on the coal plant. (.05)
2. Fort Worth proper - Tower 55, UP's Centennial Yard, TRE, Amtrak, FWWR, BNSF's North Yard, Saginaw, et al.  Highly compressed, focusing mostly on the immediate Tower 55 area and north, and a lot of staging representing the 100+ trains per day that pass. (.13)
3. FW&D from Saginaw/Alliance to Amarillo - about a third of the layout.  Mostly a lot of mainline railroading, grain elevators, passing sidings, etc. (.34)
4. ATSF Transcon from Canyon, TX to Curtis Hill - Including the Amarillo yard.  Also includes branch to Borger from Panhandle. (.13)
5. Trinchera Pass to Trinidad, CO.  Trinidad will be "morphed" with features from Pueblo as well. And the ATSF/C&W lines will be featured, feeding into staging (.09)
6. Denver proper, including relevant BNSF lines, and the beginning of the joint line south (.09)
7. Powder River Basin - Alliance to Crawford to north entrance and the Caballo Rojo and Black Thunder mines. (.17)
The overriding theme is basically to follow a unit coal train from mine to power plant, with a whole lot of craziness in between.

The blank check means no worries about the hundreds of daily trains needed to model Tower 55, Saginaw, the Transcon, Denver, and the PRB.  And, it means currator, construction, maintenance, and security functions will be taken care of.  I would handle the layout construction except for probably some of the benchwork and I would probably buy some things, like the backdrops, commercially....at least for starters until I could attempt them myself.

[AlkemScaleModels]

4500 square feet for a layout....Hmmmm That works out to about 15 times the space I have now. So,if income scales linearly with space,  I must have 15x the cash available. So there would be plenty of money to hire people to do the grunt work, like maintenance, carving rocks, decoder installs, tree building etc.  That detail out of the way, I'd probably try building a layout with lots of really deep scenes, with floor to high ceiling ( at least 15 feet high) scenery, with some kind of walk-through dark aisles with brightly lit scenes in a long diorama setting. I'd  probably do a larger scale than N, maybe O. I am thinking like the La Mesa Tehachapi club layout as a role model.

On the other hand, with 15x the cash, I'd probably fill the space with ferrari and porsche sports cars and keep my current layout. Throw in a killer home theater, video gaming center, exercise room, refreshment center and a uber fast internet link.

[asciibaron]

here's my real answer...

the first 13 miles of the B&O circa 1844 in O scale.  money is no object, so that means all custom motive power and rolling stock.  mud diggers, Thomas Viaduct, Patterson Viaduct, and Mt. Clare.  seriously, it would be an American icon layout.

-steve

[Puddington]

The Canadian Pacific Railway from Calgary to Vancouver in 1955; with a Kettle Valley Division "sub"...... man could you do some mountain raiway'in and some major yards in that space......

[TrainCat2]

Baltimore!!

B&O, Pennsy, Huge coal & grain docks along with all of the harbor trackage, NEC. Lets throw in DC for some SERIOUS passenger traffic and the beautiful station tracks, throat switches, catenary, etc.

Be still my beating heart.

[squirrelhunter]

The St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico in the 40's from Brownsville to Houston. The line is currently UP's Brownsville Sub.

I'd probabaly go HO and build custom models made of all the road specific teakettles the populated all the light rail branches in the Rio Grande Valley or around Victoria.

Oh, and I would hire help. At that scale of layout, I would focus on specific scenes or equipment, let the paid help build benchwork and lay track.

[John]

Hmm .... I think I will hold out for the aircraft hanger 

[3rdrail]

Hmm .... I think I will hold out for the aircraft hanger 

Out on Long Island, right?  ;D

[John]

Hmm .... I think I will hold out for the aircraft hanger 

Out on Long Island, right?  ;D

Actually, I was thinking Hangar One at Lakehurst .. but .. Long Island will have to do

[Erik W]

Hmm .... I think I will hold out for the aircraft hanger 

Out on Long Island, right?  ;D

What ever happened to that guy?

Erik

[oakcreekco]

DRGW "Craig Branch", and whatever else DRGW could be "stuffed in" only 4500 sqft.

[Dump The Air]

C&O Big Sandy Sub and the CRR Elkhorn Extension in 1972, all the Branches on both sides, only 2 major staging yards (Dante and Big Sandy Junction/Russel) plenty of traffic. Hot merchandise, and LOTS of coal. Simple enough to be realistic, even if the C&O branches are very very extensive.

Bump the square footage up a little bit and I'll do it in 2 rail O scale.

[Walkercolt]

I thought about this a couple of days before answering. I'd have to have a "two-part" layout. Frisco in the Ozarks and Santa Fe thru Abo Canyon both with floor to ceiling secenry, and a very compressed "Oklahoma/Kansas" area, but it wouldn't be as big as you'd think. I'd have to have a couple of 7-8' radius "passenger train calander shot" curves, just for a place to see the Super Chief on a curve all at once(maybe even larger). I might not do a unit coal train. Grain hoppers and modern tankcars are more my taste. An inter-modal would make it's appearance daily, and probably an auto-rack/autoparts train. Then I know where Peter Jerosic(hope I spelled it close) has an entire brass El Capitan completely decorated inside (you have to see his work to understand...I've seen O scale less detailed) and lighted where the lights in the roomettes and drawing rooms go on and off randomly(!!!!) I might operate the layout from "Schamburg" via computer inter-link, and at least part of the layouts signals would be ATSF 12-3 o'clock semiphores, just because. And me being me, I'd get on eBay or Craig's list and buy a bunch of sick camcorders to use as "camera view cams" on a switcher to view "distant trains" on a fairly big screen monitor. One of my "junk boxes" in the garage has about 20 "sick" camcorders I got given to me by a repairman from people who wouldn't pay the "bench charge" to check them out. The camera part is usually always good, but either the recorder is bad, or the controls don't work(usually both from getting wet). Nowdays, many service shops will PAY you to haul off old full-sized VHS camcorders or C-VHS camcorders. You have to rig you're own power supplies, and may need to make them "stupid" with a cassette with no tape in it so they'll keep "recording", or mess around with the controls(you can have nothing to lose). Cheaper and usually better quality image than the cheap color cameras, just bulky.

[CVSNE]

Hmmm . . . I'd build a layout a little larger than I have no - at the center of the space - hire people to do the grunt work and all the things I don't like  . . . add a bar and home theater . . . and then a lot of walls, doors, traps and other booby-traps -- along with a well-armed group of henchmen. Next, I'd come up with some sort of Bond-esque cool bad buy nickname.

Then, I'd buy me a couple of those "8" Cylons . . . and maybe a "6" for Bernie . . .

 Then I'd invite all my favorite internet "acquaintances" over for an op session . . . their mission . . . somehow get through to the layout . . . mine? To sit in the "command center" and laugh at their failures and demise . . . .  ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D