Hi Matt,
Here's my two cents or so opinions on these books.
The John Armstrong Track Planning book is excellent and is considered to be THE "bible" of layout track planning. John Armstrong is considered to be the "Dean of track planning" by most in the hobby. If I could only buy one of the books on your list, this would be it.
There is another book he has written called, "The Railroad - What It Is. What It Does". It is an excellent overview of how the real railroads operate and is a great resource if you're interested in that. I believe there is a newer, revised edition available out there, and also one on a CD. It is currently available and you should have no problem finding a vendor for it by just Googling around.
The Tony Koester Ops Book is pretty good, but the model rr ops book considered by most to be, again to use the term, the "bible" on the subject, is the operations book by Bruce Chubb. Unfortunately, it is long out of print, but with some looking around and patience and persistance, you should be able to locate a copy...eventually.
Another good one, and I don't recall as I write this if it was mentioned, is the Kalmbach book on building model rr benchwork, written by Linn Westcott. This is, again, a very much referenced book which initially introduced and describes the "L-girder" method of benchwork construction.
Andy Sperandeo's book on wiring the layout is, I believe, the current reference on the subject available.
The other books on the list are so-so but I haven't seen all of them. A lot of times the Kalmbach books are just a collection of articles that originally ran in Model Railroader mag, so if you have a collection of MR going back a couple decades, you probably already have everything that appears in these books. They used to indicate this by displaying on the cover of the book, the phrase, "From The Pages Of Model Railroader Magazine", but I seem to recall a couple recent ones that didn't have this on there.
Another good book by Kalmbach, and I don't know off hand if it's still available, is the scenery book which was written by David Frary. I believe he used to sell this on his web site at:
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Someone mentioned, I think it was Larry, the books by Paul Mallery (recently deceased, as well as John Armstrong). Yes, his books are good but be aware they are kind of dry reading. Nothing wrong, with that, but that style of writing may not appeal to everyone. Good info, though.
That's all I can think of at the moment. Hope this has been of some help to you, Matt.
Take care.
Paul - "The CB&Q Guy" (Modeling 1969 In HO.)