After reading, and

no tunnels in Illinois

I think the terrain you have in the photo is more in line with Appalachian or western mountain scenery.  Illinois, Iowa and Missouri are Midwestern states and mostly rolling hills and farm country.  Southern Illinois is in fact almost dead flat.  There are some places in river valleys which may be more rugged, but tunnels in these places are almost nonexistent.  It will be difficult to combine your scenery interest with the three prototypes you mentioned in a realistic manner.

Jurgen is correct about most of the Midwest

Hi Polo

Jurgen is correct about most of Missouri and Illinois, I have never been to Iowa, so cannot comment on it.  I live is southeast Missouri in a small town called Sikeston.   It is about 30 miles west of the Mississippi River and is very flat.  In fact this area used to be a swamp and in the early 1900's they drained the swamp leaving very flat farm land. 

However, there is an area of south central Missouri and north central Arkansas called the Ozark Mountains that looks like a small scale Appalachia.  If you do a Google search for "Ozark Mountains"  you can find a lot of info and pictures.  Here is a link to one:

http://www.google.com/search?q=ozark+mountains&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=m9B&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=nwiPTpmSOuvJsQLBxKSZAQ&ved=0CFQQsAQ&biw=1016&bih=606

Here is one you might like:

http://www.google.com/imgres?q=ozark+mountains&hl=en&client=firefox-a&sa=X&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&biw=1016&bih=606&tbm=isch&prmd=imvns&tbnid=_LwmvnDVUOX7MM:&imgrefurl=http://www.southernliving.com/travel/fall-vacations-mountains-south-00400000054859/page11.html&docid=SWvee4rMoOG8PM&w=400&h=400&ei=6wuPTtu5NsymsQKR_NClAQ&zoom=1

These don't look right, so I'm not sure if they will work, but maybe you can still use them.  My computer here at work sometimes does not do links well.

Unfortunately, this area is also like the Appalachians in that there is very little industry, but it does have beautiful scenery.  

Hopefully, this will give you some ideas.  But Jurgen is right, the entire midwest is very flat to low rolling hills.

BTW:  your model looks very good.

But there ARE tunnels in Missouri

Anybody who has been to the Museum of Transportation in Kirkwood (St. Louis) will know that there is at least one tunnel right in the middle of the area he's describing.  I'm sure there are others - there is actually quite a lot of elevation change right on the Mississippi River.

US railroad

The only place the MKT, CNW and ATSF co-exist is Kansas City which is very non rural, being a very large and urban city.

If you model circa the late 1990's that would be post UP merger and the MKT and CNW would both be part of the UP and so could be operating together.  That would also make the ATSF part of BNSF due to mergers.

The net-net of all that is that opens a wide swath of the midwest and west to possibilities.  With the terrain in the pictures the most likely area would be Missouri or northern Arkansas.  I would pretend theat the MKT line along the Missouri into St Louis hadn't been abandoned or the MKT line into Sedalia, MO was still there or the former MP (also part of the UP) along the White River in Arkansas (Nevada, Carthage, Branson, Cotter, AR) hadn't been spun off as a short line.  All of those lines went through rugged areas, somewhere touched the BNSF and would have had trestles and tunnels.

What ATSF colors is your Gp9?

Santa Fe used black with silver "zebra stripe" on road switchers until @ 1959, I think.  In the late 1950's early 1960's they started painting their road switchers with what is known as the "book end" scheme.  The body is blue with yellow ends and a yellow stripe along the top of the hoods.  In the late 1960's and early 1970's they started doing a new paint scheme the yellow war bonnet.  The yellow bonnet follows the design of the passenger red and silver war bonnet scheme with yellow where red would be and blue where the silver would be.

looks like I jumped the gun here!

Hi all, 

Thank you very much for your detailed replies. I have done some research based on everyones comments.

I think that on reflection I have been too quick out of the blocks. AS the situation stands right now, the locomotives I have could really use a refurb and repaint, I only have enough box cars for a single train and would need to buy more passenger cars for a matching train. 

I still want to go ahead with my modular idea, however I think it will be less work to repaint some of what I already have (and buy according to region in the future), rather than trying to conceive a convoluted story to justify what I already have. 

SO... here are a series of pictures or places/scenes/items I would like to include on my layout. Please could you let me know where in the us would be appropriate to include these:

I love this look of trestle bridge, however I think I would need to condense it to make it worn on my modules, mainly in height (although I could go modular vertically too hmm)

Logging operations including animated loading 

Some way of unloading the logs, so they have somewhere to go (probably on a seperate module to the loading ops.

Coal loading operation (automated)

and also un loading, (how is this done in the us? are there bottom opening cars?

I hope to be able to create snaking trains through the scenery 

Scenery like this would be nice:

However the claustrophobia of a cutting is very appealing, despite me not being able to find any pics right now (sigh)

Another consideration that may sound a bit bizarre. I like to think that the US is a fair bit warmer that the UK, Many of the US layouts here in the UK seem to "feel" warm. I may achieve this by adding reds and oranges into the lighting spectrum. 

I have been speaking to someone about a 2-8-8-2 Mallet Locomotive so this might get added to the rosta (I wander if 22" radius is still realistic for the inner main?

Really sorry to have given the runaround on this question and being presumptuous before. I do appreciate your responces

I think that the U.K. is at the same latitude as New England.

It may even be as far north as Southern Canada.  The U.S. is about 3,000 miles wide and about 2,000 mile long North to South.  The result is that we have a wide range of climates.  Much of the old Santa Fe mainline is located in the desert where summertime temps can go above 100 or even 120 degrees.  The Southeast is as far South as the Southwest, but the mountains are not as tall in the East, so there is a lot more rain in the Southeast which causes higher humidity but also lower temps.  The Rocky Mountains going up through Northern New Mexico north to Montana, and the Sierra Nevada in California and the Cascades in Washington and Oregon are tall enough to have snow lasting year round on the tallest peaks.

The difference between a gondola and a hopper is that the gondola does not open on the bottom.  The hopper car has gates to unload on the bottom.  Gondolas will be loaded by machinery into the top, while hopper cars will be loaded through the top, but unload through gates in the bottom.

Finally regarding your question about the 2-8-8-2, 22 inch radius should be fine in n-scale.  22 inches in n would be the equivalent of almost double that in ho.

The final advice that I would give is to only do N-scale modules if you are going to set them, up in an N-Trak set up at a show.  The N-trak modular standards put restrictions on what you can build.  If you make your layout sectional instead of to modular standards, then you can put your tracks where you want them without needing to worry about making 2 or 3 or more mainline tracks that must go all the way around the layout.  In the U.S. multi track mainlines are common in the Northeast.  The Southwest has a lot more single track mainlines with passing sidings rather than double track mainlines.  The exception in the Southwest is the Santa Fe that runs a double track main all the way from Los Angeles to Chicago.

Reality check

The American Freedom train engine on the trestle is a fantasy scene.  The trestle is way to flimsy to support that engine.  Not saying you can't build it, but its a fantasy arrangement.

Automated loading in N scale will be challenging.  You also have mixed eras in the pictures.  The images you presented cover 100 years of railroading so stuff that may be appropriate in one scene might look totally out of place in another.

The coaling tower looks nothing like US practice.

As far as the last to pictures.  Several people have done similar scenes in N scale.  But you have to be aware of the size of the scene.  For example the DRGW passenger train in the valley, the valley is about 7 passenger cars from the river surface to the top of the butte.  Assuming an N scale passenger car is about 6 inches long, that would make the scene 3 and a half feet deep vertically and 2 feet deep horizontally.  One fellow did the New River Gorge but it took 3-4 modules and it covered 30+ square feet.

http://www.nvntrak.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=18:hawks-nest&catid=5:modules&Itemid=6

PASSING THRU SIKESTON

HI JIM, EVERY TIME I PASS THRU SIKESTON I GET IN THE HEAD WITH A BUN. NICE PLACE TO EAT, BAYOUMAN

Hi Bayouman Lamberts is

Hi Bayouman

Lamberts is always a busy place.  We go by there every now and then and there is always a line, so we haven't ate there in a long time

.  Do you live close?

I will send you some contact info offline and you can email me if you want.

New too

I am also from the UK just recently started modelling, but I am modelling the Chesapeake and Ohio in HO, covering the mining areas around West Virginia and Virginia. I have already acquired locomotives 3 mallets, an Allegeney 2-6-6-6 and a GP7/9 and have started to plan a layout and by trial and some error laying track, so any hints etc on forming road bed would be grateful, also names of products are more often than not different in the UK. Quite a lot of the rolling stock, locos and structures I have had to buy from the states so I get nabbed by customs, which is a pain in the ass. most suppliers that stock American, don't stock C & O despite them being 'The greatest coal haulers of them all' (quote)

UK

The UK is on a latitude same as Nova Scotia, Iowa i believe is pretty flat, I don't know you ex colonials and your geography! lol. just joking (its our English sense of humor) I am modelling the Chesapeake and Ohio as I have already mentioned and there are lots of hills, valleys cuttings and tunnels in this area. The Appalanchian mountains is an excellent area to model

Where in the UK are you Rich,

Where in the UK are you Rich, and what scale are you in? I think I might have a C&o loco somewhere but im not sure if its N or HO. 

C & O in the Uk

I am modelling in HO scale, I live in Eastbourne, East Sussex. I buy alot of my stuff direct from the states, either from a dealer or e-bay. Occasionally a C & O item pops up on e-bay in the UK. Anything C & O in HO before 1956