So, your club has been at the same location for 15 years.

3000 Sq feet of layout, hundreds of scenery products, half finished projects, extra track, member's lockers full of trains. Lots of stuff.

And the landlord says, I am bancrupt, your lease will not be renewed. I am selling the building. You have a year to move.

And the local real estate market is booming!

Now is when all the doomsday planning comes into play. The budget surplus, wiring segmentation, and module separation points.

There have been many excellent model railroaders that I have admire over the years. So many, that I would be remiss if I tried to name them all. But two that come right to mind for me are David Barrow and Lance Mindheim. Many years ago I read about David Barrows Cat Mountain and Santa Fe and saw how realism can be acheived through simplicity.  His original CM&SF wasn't overly scenicked. It wasn't overly landscaped. But it looked right. Than a few years later he wrote about dominos, 2' x 4' boxes that you basically assemble right on the workbench.

I was checking out a new web site I ran across (openrailwaymap.org) and was following the Iowa Interstate line west when I noticed the track arrangement at Wilton, Iowa. Wilton is home to one of the Gerdau Ameristeel plants that takes in scrap steel for recycling into long steel – products such as wire, tubes, beams, etc., and even slab steel.