The Chesapeake and Ohio Piedmont Subdivision is located in Virginia. It runs from Richmond Va’s Fulton Yard to Charlottesville, Va. It was one of the first rail lines in Virginia and the first of the Chesapeake and Ohio which was the Louisa Railroad at the time. Back in the C&O days, all kinds of freight and passenger trains traveled the Piedmont sub. I recommend that it take place in the 50s during the prime of the C&O. There were many vibrant paint schemes at that time and even steam engines still roaming the rails. Some good locomotives would be the F7, E8, GP7, J3a Greenbrier Class 4-8-4, K-2 Mikado and maybe even the BL2! Services would consist of the C&O Sportsman and George Washington passenger trains and the freight trains running through the area too. Coal was the C&Os biggest type of freight and lots of the westbound empties ran down the Piedmont sub even today in the CSX era. Please consider this as a route. I have provided some photos of the Piedmont sub in the mid 1900s (30s-70s) and a information label from the C&O Heritage Center in Clifton Forge I found on my trip there earlier this year.
Also, should you decide to make this route, the current track maps are from after many of the side tracks were torn up in the 70s. A lot of info on the Piedmont sub can be found here https://www.piedmontsub.com/ including siding maps and other important stuff for route building!
The enormous C&O 2-6-6-6 Allegheny steam locomotives would be awesome to see handling heavy coal or freight trains on this route.
