@prrjim posted:I have some general thoughts. First, in any given space, an around the walls layout will provide more square footage for trains than a table top layout you walk around. And with the layout against the walls, they can be used to expand scenery with backdrops for the good old PA hills, or for building facades - generally the rears since this usually faced the tracks. So very large buildings can be represented with very little depth onto the layout.
You might want to also consider what you want to do with the layout when you get it built. It is really disappointing to put the last building in place and then think "is this all there is?". Think about whether you want to just sit back and drink a cold one and watch stuff run round and round, or do you want to do something else like perhaps some operating including freight switching with car cards and waybills or a switchilst. Neither idea is wrong, but how you want to use the layout when it is assembled does very strongly affect the track plan.
Steel is big industry. representing it mostly on the back drop is a big help in O.
The mention of flextrack is very important. Seriously consider it. You want to learn new skills and working with flex track will require some. However, the advantages of using it will be worth it. You can be much more flexible in track planning and curve radius. And brands such as Gargraves look so much better. Also the less sharp switchers look better and cause less derailments. And you can more easily put sidings closer together.
I'm not from Butler county, I am from Beaver County to the south. However, I did work for Armco for the first 3rd of my career and went to Butler works often. They did make steel, but as mentioned not in a blast furnace. They had a large "new" electric melt shop. A lot of their "charge" (or all of it) was scrap but clean scrap so as not to contaminate the steel grades. They made STainless steel and electrical steel. Electrical steel is made metallurically and then treated to be much more efficient for such things as motor cores and transformer cores. It passes the current more readily because the molecules align, and it does not create nearly as much heat which is lost energy, So modeling that operation, the melt shop would be pretty much enclosed and there are no blast furnaces.
A final thought, I model the area south Pittsburgh also - and rather loosely. The line down the Monongehela Valley from Pittsburgh south was built as the Pittsburgh, Virginia, and Charlestown RR. It was taken over and completed by the PRR in 1873 and rolled into the PRR in 1905 (30 years of operations under that name). So if you are looking for another name, PV&C is a candidate.
prrjim hit all the points I would make, most especially regarding what you want to do with the layout once built.
Think about whether you want to just sit back and drink a cold one and watch stuff run round and round, or do you want to do something else like perhaps some operating including freight switching with car cards and waybills or a switchilst. Neither idea is wrong, but how you want to use the layout when it is assembled does very strongly affect the track plan.
The Plywood Empire Route (a much smaller and less ambitious project than yours) evolved over time into a mostly switching pike because through experience I found this kind of Operating to be most interesting and satisfying for me. It is an around-the-walls layout and watching the train roll is part of the enjoyment but by now if I removed one track switch and turned it into a point-to-point Pike the PER would still retain most of it's character, charm and usefulness for me.
