First Post - what this is about.

I'm planning to model the Wenatchee-Oroville railroad line built by  the Great Northern Railway. The project is in its formative stage, with me gathering information, looking for resources and formulating what I want to do with this.
I enjoy railroads, their operations and model railroading, but am balancing that with the normal demands of life and family. The space for the layout is currently occupied with another model railroad, which has turned out to be less than satisfactory to me.

The present occupant is a free-lanced line that proposes to represent the old CMStP&P (Milwaukee Road) line across Washington. I've imagined several alternate realities:

• The SP&S (Spokane, Portland & Seattle) was excluded from the merger (or the merger never took place - version 1.1) that created the BN (Burlington Northern). As the Milwaukee was in dire straits, they sold off the Seaattle-Spokane  portion of the line and the SP&S bought it. Timeline would be 1970-79 or so. Motive power would include Alco C424/425/636's, GP7/9/30/35/38/40, and SD40/45's, plus GE U30/33/36 type power. Potentially.
• MRL (Montana Rail Link)  buys the line, giving them a bridge route across Washington, Idaho and most of Montana. Because the line has good clearances along it, thanks to the electrics the Milwaukee ran, and it ties conveniently into Seattle, it becomes a pressure valve route for BN and UP (Union Pacific) for double-stacks, grain, and other commodities. Timeline would be 1987-2000 or so, and allows for SD40-2's, GE Dash 8 and 9's, lots of modern stuff.

Problems with this mostly centered around my inablilty to focus on any of these to a degree that seemed plausible. The route doesn't have a lot of industry, so switching would be minimal. I didn't plan the towns and industries first. I basically tried to build as long of a mainline as possible into my space. My current feeling is that I've reached a point of diminishing returns.
In any event, progress has come to a halt, and my interests have grown around prototype modeling. I'll discuss this more in another post.