Jamie,

Am I correct in understanding your setup is outdoors? That seems too high-maintenance to me... animals and weather carrying off people, disrupting track, dropping leaves and other stuff on the whole set-up... yeah. Sounds like work! Still, while I doubt I'd do it myself, yours looks nice!

My ex-wife and I used to do a christmas village around our tree, and we had a train that ran through and around it. That's about as close as I've gotten to serious model train stuff.

In Phoenix, there's a park called "McCormick Railroad Park," where they have a pretty impressive display of trains, both real and model.