After much thought and many starts & stops, I have decided to change my focus in scale and the size of my goal layout.  
The biggest issue is that the place I have is not conducive to what I can come up with in HO scale.  
Probably the main issue is that the room is small & any layout will have to share the space.  
Ok, that probably means a smaller scale.  
The assortment of supplies in N scale is more than adequate, yes not as much detail, but that is all right..  

I played around a bit tonight and I think I am pretty close to what the final plan will be. I think at this point I just need to mock up the structures and sit them and the track out on the modules to get everything finalized.

Original plan with lost of nice scenery etc added:

Revisions from tonight:

The model railroad I’ve been building in my middle school classroom has been more or less frozen in time since students went home due to Covid last March. Teaching remotely was and remains a tremendous challenge for all parties involved, and when most students started returning to campus a few months ago the transitions and complications were even more challenging, taking a big toll on my outlook for my unique circumstances of being able to leverage my hobby interests in my professional life. 

I’ve been thinking (against my better judgment) that it would be nice to have some rudimentary scenery in my staging area and hidden track. Security cameras, and maybe onboard cameras, will allow me to enjoy watching a train traverse through large portions of my layout that will be otherwise hidden. This area, in particular, would be neat to have the cliffs to the right side that the prototype traversed up a valley to the fields above.