To help make the correct choices during the building of the Rock Country Railroad, I have defined the following standards and benchmarks so the end results will be what I want (I hope).

Benchwork:
Benchwork will be over built, so I will never have to worry about it failing on me. I had an engineering friend who once told me that, "Anyone can build a barn that lasts for 100 years but takes an engineer to build a barn that is just about falling down for 100 years and in 101st year it falls down". My benchwork will without question not use the engineering design. I will also have all the benchwork for the diorama areas level to make switching work better.

Trackwork:
I will be using Peco On30 track for my first switching layout and that will define my minimum radius as 24".   After I have learned from the switching layout my minimum radius curves could be 30" or more where I have the room. I have noticed that many people building trams in On30 go down to 15" even 12" radius curves. I am avoiding the very tight radiuses because I plan to run three foot size equipment and most of all because I am building for operation which is better when you use the largest radius you can find room for. I plan to use easements but I am willing to forgo them if I have to, after all it is narrow gauge. For my switching areas, most of the curves will be very large radiuses if I have any curves except for the switches. I plan to throw most if not all switches by hand but we will see how that works on the switching layout. I am waiting to see how it works out, but I might need to wire my switches so they switch the power to the frog when you move the switch stand. The real problem with routing power with the switch stands is having scale looking switch stands that also have contacts for the wiring. Each piece of track will have wire soldered to it and running to the bus wires so I will not require any rail joiner to carry current.

Scenery:
I want all my scenery to be at the same quality level and to be able to decide if I arrived at my goal. To check my scenery, I plan to take pictures and review them to see if they are "movie set good" or in other words, make sure the pictures of the scenery does not contain things that do not look real. I will not be making models of real scenes, just models that look real. I have noticed that many pictures of exceptional modeling still do not look real because most of the time you notice the model trees. I plan to avoid the tree problem by modeling the arid area to the east of Middle Earth with very few or no trees.

Equipment:
All locomotives will have track wipers and DCC. I have found that you do not notice track wipers but they do a lot to keep the locomotive from stalling on the track. Notice that I am not listing sound as one of the requirements. I plan to avoid locomotive sound because I hope to be running many trains at once. Sound is great when you are running one or two trains at a time but when you get many trains going at same time, it becomes nuisance noise to me. I plan to play period background music at mild levels as I have done with past layouts and really enjoyed.

All equipment will use Kadee couplers set using the Kadee HO height gauge or set at 26" from the rail head. I have looked at On3 couplers but at this time, it seems like the best bet to use the HO Kadees at the HO height or On3 height. I plan to avoid track magnets and use hand uncoupling.

Bachmann two truck rolling stock will be lowered so they well look right to me with Kadees and the HO or 26" height.

Trucked equipment will have one truck fixed and the other truck with flex for three point stance.

The track design does not allow for loads in and empties out operation. To cover loads in and empties out, I will use covered or enclosed equipment (like tank cars) so it will not be obvious that I am not really moving anything in the model trains.

Notice that I am cheating on effort (and cost) again. First, white space with no scenery and now, no trees where I have scenery plus covered equipment so you can't tell when it is loaded or not. I still have plenty to do after all the cheating, so I don't think I made it to easy yet. :)