The first version of the Slate Creek was in a basement apartment in Westbrook, CT, and started when a friend asked me if I'd be interested in living in the apartment. As we were looking at the place, which was the basement of his raised ranch, I pointed to the shelf running along the wall at the top of the foundation, and jokingly pointed out where I was going to cut the tunnels so that the train could move from room to room. He said he didn't see a problem with that ... and before he could change his mind, I moved in, and started cutting holes!
Originally, the railroad was going to be HO, or even On30 ... but for Christmas that year, my brother gave me a sidetank porter, and two LGB side dump cars... and the die was cast. From there, though, I made some mistakes that would come back later to haunt me. First, I selected LGB R2 curves and R1 switches not realizing the limitations that that one choice would eventually put on the railroad. While the original porter and the soon after acquired Shays #4 and #5 would take the trackage, there were some obvious problems just in what the train looked like rounding curves. Much of that was excused though by the unique route of the train.
The main line started in the bedroom, crossing over the head of the bed and running along the approximately 6" shelf that ran the length of the walls where the top of the foundation met the frame of the house. The track then passed through a storage room that wasn't mine (but the landlord allowed me "trackage rights" to make the railroad work) and into the living room, passing behind the couch, and over a swinging bridge that allowed folks to enter and leave via the apartment's main entrance door.
From there the track passed through another portal into the storage room/kitchen area, and down a 4% grade passing through the bathroom, under the front door landing, and then back up the 4% grade into the bedroom. First time visitors were often shocked at the presence of the track, but even more by the passage of a train as the track crossed the top of the toilet tank and then exited through a portal next to the sink, into a closet, and from there into the bedroom. 
In the bedroom, half the room was landscaped into mountains and a yard area, and then back to the main line toward the bed.
Equipment was a hodgepodge at best. Most of my friends at that point used to say "it doesn't really matter... it's all G scale!" when I talked about what to get, and honestly the Shay didn't look bad with the Big Hauler stuff, or the LGB caboose, so for awhile I had an ecclectic mix of 1:22.5, 1:20.3, and even some 1:24 and 1:29 thrown in for good measure. Eventually, though, it just began to look "wrong" to me, and I started to think more along the lines of scale fidelity. At that point Bachmann released the 2-8-0 in 1:20.3, and it wouldn't take the curves ... and the magnitude of the error I'd made was fully revealed.
For better or worse, it was about that time that my then fiancee and I determined that I would need to move to North Carolina ... meaning that the railroad that had only just been up and running for a year and a half would move too. The good news was, the new residence had a basement of some 40x40 feet that would be available to start over, and correct the issues of scale and curvature, and from which I could remove the grades all but entirely.
Today all that's left of the Slate Creek Mark I is the mural in the living room, and some stray track and scenery that hasn't been pulled up yet. The mountains in the bedroom and bath are gone, and the track has all but disappeared. The non 1:20.3 equipment was sold off, although most of the equipment lettered "Slate Creek" went to a nice fellow in Wisconsin who built a really nice looking large scale railroad around his rec room ... they share track space with an Aristo Mallet and a project you'll see chronicled here in the next couple of weeks, an Aristo Mikado that I'm customizing for him. The logo remains, and the 1:20.3 fleet is nearly larger than the old ecclectic fleet once was.
The old photo gallery for the old layout still exists, and can be seen at: http://home.earthlink.net/~mbrown31/oldscry.htm
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