Liberty Industrial Spur

[FCIN]

Ed, I think the reason I enjoyed the 4x8 was that I wasn't under any pressure to make things realistic

Justin;
You should never feel like you're under any sort of pressure with model railroading in any form! It's for YOUR enjoyment and should be a stress reliever and not a stress inducer! You also don't need to seek the approval of others and feel like if you don't meet their expectations or skill level then you shouldn't even try. Good enough can be a heck of a lot of fun! Main thing is that you find your niche and enjoy it. If you stay with the hobby, then your skills will improve over time and no doubt your interests will change.

when I build a layout I want more of a representation of a place rather than a piece of art

That puts you in the majority of modelers - a representation is pretty much all any of us can do. Darn few prototype locations that I've ever seen that could be modeled foot for foot, but many people can create darn good representations of that location. I have a friend in Indiana that is going to model the F&C Railroad in N scale and he knows that there is no way he could accurately model a 40 mile long railroad nor even include many of the most interesting features of the line. So to quote him: "It's just going to be a representation of the F&C..."

I may end up building Lance M's "Skills Builder" layout, it would be fairly quick to build to a complete looking state so I can focus on the parts of the hobby I enjoy.

That "Skills Builder" layout is yet another switching theme layout and not much different from his Palmetto Spur layout, so I wonder if you'd really be happy with that. I get the feeling that you'd be happier with a nice simple 4x8 type layout that included some switching and something like I described in my previous posting. Such a layout would not require a lot of track and only a few more turnouts and you could add scenery and structures as time permitted. In the mean time, you could just enjoy running the trains and doing some basic switching on the layout which seems to be your "niche".