Layout Ideas: Choosing a Theme

Now that I am fully moved into my new house, I can start thinking more about what theme I want my future HO scale layout to have. While I still don't have the time to start actually building anything just yet, it definitely can't hurt to have some ideas in place beforehand. Plus, I really don't want to just blindly start building something then get halfway through just to change my mind anyway.

Originally I thought about doing something solely based on the Detroit and Mackinac railway, but several weeks of finding little to nothing in terms of locomotives or rolling stock for sale has made change my mind a bit. Rather than focus on one small railroad, I thought I would come up with a layout based on Michigan railroads, which opens up all kinds of possibilities. 

Here are some of the criteria I've been thinking of going with:

Scale

I've stated this above and in my first post, but just to be thorough here, I am going with HO. This will not be changing since I've always been an HO scale modeler and there is just so much out there in terms of locomotives, rolling stock, scenery, supplies, etc.

A typical HO scale locomotive from ModelTrainStuff.com

Time Period

The era of choice would most likely be anything from the 1980's through present day. This allows a lot of flexibility as far as choices of railroads as well as types of locomotives, rolling stock and scenery. Plus, I grew up fascinated with trains in the early to mid 90's, so this kind of works out perfectly.

Pictures of various trains in Michigan from RRPictureArchives.net

Location
When I say location, I mean the real life areas I would like to model after. For me this means the state of Michigan. I don't plan on modeling any specific city or anything, but I would like to maintain the look and feel of my home state. This will likely mean a small town feel along with some industry and metropolitan areas. Other than that I would just like to get some nice wooded areas.

Layout Size

In the space I have set aside for myself, I can really do anything from a simple 4' x 8' rectangle to a complete around-the-room style layout. I am kind of leaning toward doing a small starter layout, this way I can get a feel for what I'm doing before going all in with a big layout.