The San Joaquin Valley lies in Central California between the cities of Stockton and Sacramento.
I particularly like Short Lines and Central California has a number of such lines, principally the California Central Traction.
My California Southern railroad is based loosely on the latter line and set somewhere in the San Joaquin Valley.
I also favour the Western railroads, in particular the Santa Fe, the Southern Pacific, and the Western Pacific and I have an interest in the Rio Grande.
Inspiration for my layout came from an article in the Fall 2015 edition of the US magazine, ‘Classic Trains’.
Titled ‘The Bridgeboro boogie’, the article featured two very minor short lines in rural Georgia. They ran just one train a day each which were timed to meet at the diamond crossing in Bridgboro’ where they exchanged freight cars in the three track yard adjacent to the crossing.
Taking the idea from the article, I simply took the whole concept and moved it to Central California where there are many instances of lines crossing each other on the level such as at Bridgeboro’.