As you've probably noticed, Chris. We all go through this from time to time.
Think of your first route as a real learning experience. You learned how to place signals, and tried different ways of doing it. They may not be correct now, but later on you could fixt them. Remember, as I've said in other posts, there's no waste of any materials. The signals were/are free, and no money wasted on anything. The only thing wasted was your time if you don't count this as a learning period.
The other good news is you could merge this route into an new one. I've done this, and have gone back to rebuilding and redoing secitions I really didn't like anymore, particularly after I had improved my techniques and found my first attempts, which I thought looked good, became awful next to the the latest sections.
There are a few things that you can do stirr up some ideas. Check out Bing maps and the Bird's eye view. Pick on a city and look at the rail yards and branchlines there are sections of various cities that I've included in my route through this. I'll trace a route and look at industrial parks, sidings, stations, and yards.
Look at books to get ideas.
When driving, take notes on the what you see. I've included some road sections into my route that are based on real places. Using Dem maps instead of manual terrain helps too if you're looking for a more prototypical landscape.
Speaking of DEMs, also look at old topomaps. These can be really useful especially if you're interested in recreating a line that no longer exists except for a few short feet of overgrown ROW. There are many lost branches were I live where only a short path exists today. In the turn of the 20th century, they were trolley lines and steam road branches that died during the depression or later when the highways went in.
John
