Today's little project - thoughts on NaNoWriMo projects

With #NaNoWriMo approaching, I began to panic, before realizing I have two ideas that could work.

So, today I am trying to envision, at least in my head, if not on paper, what a #steampunk Alternate Reality Salt Lake City would look like, especially how things in that earlier (2011 NaNoWriMo project would look if allowed to age forward. 

Things like the Confederated Republics of America, yeah, the Union won, but by a negotiated surrender after the Sioux, Apache, Comanche, Cheyenne and other tribes joined the boys in blue for a march to St. Augustine, not Savannah. More of a charge, all cavalry, from the area of DC south rapidly, ending at some place in South Carolina, where the CSA surrendered, but was allowed more autonomy on issues other than slavery, women's suffrage, and some other ideas still playing with.
This created a series of Nations or Republics, Including the Republics of California, Texas, The Nation, Lakota, Cheyenne, etc. and some weird ones. Think if the Mormons had seceded as well, forming Deseret as that Theocratic Democracy they'd envisioned, but rejoined to survive a hostile encirclement. 

Looking at what the land evolved to lead to how do you get around in a world of much higher solar activity? Obviously, metals become very dangerous to use, in conflict with the original story, but I can fix that try to make it fit better, and mass transit makes more sense, over having huge areas in downtown set aside as liveries and corrals for horses. 

So, what techs did evolve, which ones evolved differently, and what other changes do I want to make to the world setting before moving onward. 

Today, that is my focus. Taking all I have learnt, bending it at key points, and then seeing what might have come about. 

Like, say, compressed air driven trolley cars, instead of electrics?