new guy,
Thank you very much for the kind words. I still have a lot of "detail" to put in yet, especially on the "Town Side" which is only in its basic stages.
Believe me, once you start putting in your scenery, it will come together very quickly. It's just a matter of knowing what you want and where you want it - that is the hard part where I am concerned. Once you have an image in your mind of how you want your layout to look, or even a section of your layout, the formation of your layout or that section will just happen.
Not sure if this will help or not but, even though my layout is 100% fictional, it is made up of places that are real and that I have been too. All I have done is (attempted) to recreate those real world places to one degree or another, at the very least, the atmosphere of them.
The one thing I can pass on as advice is to "loose lay" everything BEFORE you decide the final positioning. You will be surprised (perhaps) how often you will look at something, after it is completed, and think "wish I had have done this or that". As an example, my "Town" has been "loose laid" for almost a year now and every time I remove the buildings to do something I find a better, or more interesting, way of arranging things. To be honest, of the 14 structures I have for the town, only 2 of them have their permanent place - the rest, get swapped around on a regular basis and, most likely, will continue to be changed for awhile yet. That also includes things like Street Lighting, man holes, benches, tree's and almost everything else as well.
Any way, bottom line is this - know what you want and where you want it THEN play around with it before settling on a final position, place or idea.
Getting the "reality" isn't hard either - look around your town, for example, and see what things are there, on the streets, around lakes, rivers, parks and so forth. I doubt there is anything in the real world that isn't also available for our hobby.