Mick, you might consider the Ogden/ Salt Lake City area for you depot location. UP, SP, DRGW, and WP all passed through or terminated in one or the other. The architecture however may not suit your tastes as it does further west.
For bridge/water locations, I suppose it depends on how grand the bridge and crossing need to be. There are any number of deck girder spans over various creeks and the Colorado River, as the DRGW heads west from Denver. The UP features two pairs of rather iconic bridges (one set of through trusses, one set of deck trusses) in Weber Canyon east of SLC. And there is at least one through truss and one minor deck girder span along the WP on the Feather River Canyon that I can think of.
Of course there is Keddie Wye on the WP, but as a very famous scene it may not be generic enough for your needs.
I can probably get map links or coordinates for you if need be. Or point you in the right direction at least.
I like rhrough truss spans, but I now tend to prefer deck girders for photos. Through trusses are more visually interesting, but they obscure the interesting train thingy that's really why you're there in the first place. Deck spans of course don't suffer this issue.
James, indeed so, both Salt Lake city and Ogden feature heavily in images collected from the web, I wish there were as many for SP depots and engines.
The location will be fictional and the architecture generic, I don't have a lot of space so it'll be too easy to make it look crowded if i'm not careful, to that end I'm trying to keep it to an oil fuel only depot, that does rule out DRG steamers, though I do thing some were oil fitted.....I need to research those in more detail; both UP and SP have all the oil burners I can wish for, not sure on WP either.
The plan isn't to mix railroads as back in the day they had their own servicing facilities, however WP freely used and mixed at DRGs facility in Salt Lake City, I also came across a UP Bull Moose at Dunsmuir image last night
what an earth that was doing there I have no idea, it's dated mid war period so could be a loan engine to the SP, though I had no idea UP loaded any engines out, I know they picked up a hand full of N&W and C&O articulated's around that time and they soon got pensioned off once traffic levels dropped back.
The plan is to have a depot layout that can be full of either UP, SP or DRG/WP but not readily mixed, maybe the odd unit.
Bridges are of the road type, sorry didn't make that clear, i just love those big concrete bridges they threw up in LA in the 30's, too big for what I need but there are smaller ones to choose from, or that sort of generic design. Salt Lake City has a big one almost right across the DRG depot, probably why there are so many photos of it. It's not concrete but steel with steel fencing and nice sets of steps down to the railroad.
I basically have three layout genres, depot, scenery and industrial. Given my very limited space you don't get much scenery in my space, you also don't get much of an industrial shunting layout either, hence a more determined focus on a depot.
If I had the space for scenery then it would have to be the feather river area, some lovely rock formations, tight areas, water and of course bridges
I can't easily get a water feature on my depot plans, but, I might add some sloped concrete edging to the layout in LA fashion so famous in movies and just smacks of LA. Shades SP's Taylor yard whose depot is right on the edge of the Los Angeles River and features the same sort of infrastructure.
Anyway, here's where I'm at so far, still a lot of detail to add in and I've tried to keep it clear of large buildings, so although there's a quite a lot of track the whole area is quite open. In fact I don't have any buildings as such, not of any size.
I do have an option to add a roundhouse maybe at the top left of the table, I can't add it when the layout is in the study, but if it ever got taken out somewhere is a possible extension, but then I'm not really a big fan of roundhouses.
It might be possible to add a two road low shed to the far left top 145' tracks, a sort of Mallet shed or lubritorium but then the road bridge would have to go or the shed cut back to stop just shy of it.
The steam service area needs more work but it's just details like, sand, oil/water, jet wash or oil/water, sand, jet wash; I need more info on depot servicing flow procedures.
The diesel pad may see the both lines in the service bund evened out at three engines long, rather than a four and two affair.
It is very tempting to add another fifth road in between the diesel and steam pads but I think that might be too much, however it could be an oil tank spur coming in from the right and truncated by the steam sand bridge. The oil tanks and pump room could be moved between the two pads which might make more logical sense.
I could then loose the existing oil tank spur (I kind of like it stuck there), then ease the ABBA release road. The space saved would allow the concrete slope for the LA river to be added and not clutter the scene too much, not a full slope, just enough to let you know it's there.
It's also very tempting to add a link from the ABBA road up to the inner diesel service pad road; that would add a crossover, not common, but not unusual.
The other option is to loose the link line from the outer diesel pad line to the table, leaving only the inner line with access to the table.
Both steam lines from the service pad go right across the table to the ready roads, so a cab forward can get across, but not be turned, that would have to be done on a Wye somewhere off stage.
Anyway, it's a start, it'll probably all fail with first contact, but failing is part of the fun....right?