Sorry you lost so much stuff. Hopefully, your new home will have a place where you can build to your heart's content. You mention the Pocono Mountain Route, which caught my eye because my layout is also of a mountainous area (Well... the Hills of West Virginia anyway).
People tend to be in one of 2 camps when it comes to layouts: Some people just want to watch them run, and some people want to have jobs to do to keep it interesting and stimulating.
I decided to have 2 tracks, one up in the hills, and one on river level. I did this so I could sit back and watch the train run around on the upper level while at the same time, I could do "jobs" on the lower racks that have a few spurs and yards to deliver to and pick up from.
Kind of the best of both worlds.
Also, I have to ask what scale you have. The reason I ask, is that it sounds like you are just about having to start over, so maybe you can consider N scale. Most people are HO, which is understandable, given the overwhelming popularity. But N gauge has come a long way, and you can do just about twice as much in N scale as compared to HO in any given space.
Here's a short video of my layout from a few months ago. I still need to do the scenery along the river (which is just a white sheet of styrene at the moment), but I have done a lot more scenery since then. But maybe this will give you some inspiration for a mountain-like scenic model railroad.
This is N scale, total footprint is 11'x10', so it would float inside your typical spare bedroom.