Well, after dabbling with the thought of trying an obscure scale, I've decided instead to go with something mainstream for ease of availability -- specifically On30. With the change of scale might come a change of railroad, we'll have to see. At the moment I'm entertaining one of these two ideas:

• A mining line serviced by a shay locomotive
• A general freight or passenger line serviced by a forney

(I know, good choice on the 2nd one, right). But you're probably wondering, how did you go from a small scale to On30 and where will this all fit? Good question; glad you asked. I talked to the wife about this empty corner...

And the idea is to turn it into something like this (not drawn to scale):