Doug, thanks very much.... it's a blessing and a curse being a perfectionist... It's taking way longer to complete this than I thought, but I am not willing to give into "that's good enough"... Not sure I can build the entire layout at this level of detail, but it's been a fun challenge to find out what I am capable of accomplishing...
I have seen a ton of really exceptional modeling done on the OGR forum and have wondered what it takes to achieve those kind of results... Of course I have to thank Google, cause I have searched a ton of google images for coal mining, coal tipples etc. etc... What a great resource for finding prototype photos and articles.